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Studies in Education 



SCIENCE, ART, HISTORY 



Se>| 



BY 



^ 



B. A. HINSDALE, Ph.D., LL.D. 

Professor of the Science and the Art of Teaching in the University of 

Michigan; Author of "President Garfield and Education," "Schools 

and Studies," "The Old Northwest," "How to Teach and 

Study History," "The American Government." "Jesus 

as a Teacher," and Editor of "The Works 

of James Abram Garfield." 




FEB 21 1896 



CHICAGO NEW YORK 

Werner School Book Company 



\Q> 



Copyright, 1896, by B. A. HINSDALE 




XlHEWERNEJ 

' PRINTERS & 



Uo tbe /Members of tbe National Council of 
Education: 

The papers that are here brought together and stamped 
with the title " Studies in Education," in the range of 
their dates just cover the period of my association with 
you in what we familiarly call The Council : 1885- 
1895. Several of these papers were written as contri- 
butions to our discussions, and all of them have been 
influenced directly or indirectly by those discussions. 
It seems to me fitting, therefore, that I should inscribe 
the volume to you. In so doing, I wish to bear witness 
to the great service that the Council has rendered me in 
stimulating and guiding my studies of educational sub- 
jects, and in the formation of lasting friendships. Esto 
perpetua. 

B. A. HINSDALE. 

The University op Michigan, 
January 15, 1896. 



PREFACE 

In 1885 I published a volume of papers, mainly edu- 
cational, under the general title of ' 'Schools and Studies." 
These papers were selected from a much larger number 
written in the years 1870-1885. Here I publish a sim- 
ilar selection from essays and addresses written during 
the last ten years, under a title that fits almost as loosely. 
Many of them have been already published in some 
form, but not all. In preparing them for this volume, 
some have been abridged and some expanded, while 
all have been more or less revised in style. A single 
paper — the one that heads the column — has been 
written for the volume. The earlier volume was sent 
out in the hope that, in this time of great educational 
activity, it might serve a good purpose. That hope is 
now expressed anew. 

My thanks are given to the editor and publishers of 
"The Educational Review" for permission to reprint the 
papers that are credited to that publication. 

B. A. H. 



CONTENTS. 

I. SOURCES OK HUMAN CULTIVATION. 

The Problem of Human Cultivation, 13; Difficulty of the 
Problem, 13-14; Elementary Facts of the Mental 
Life, 14-16; Pedagogical Metaphors, 16-19; Causes 
of Mental Growth Divided Into Two Groups, 19; 
(1). The Primary Group: Facts of Nature, the 
Actions of Men, Facts of the Mind, 19-24; The 
Primordial Sources of Cultivation and Their Rela- 
tions, 24-25; (2). The Secondary Group: Oral 
Language, Arts and Inventions, Symbols, Writing, 
25-26; Remarks on this Group, 27-38; School 
Studies Determined in Great Part by Logic of Life, 
39; Child's Store of Knowledge and Store of Lan- 
guage when He Comes to School, 39-40; Child's 
Development to Continue on Both Lines, 40; All 
Sources of Knowlege to be Drawn upon, 40-41 ; Arts 
of the School to be Taught, 41-42; Changes in Edu- 
cation, 42; Narrowness of View the Danger of the 
Present, 42-43. > 

II. THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 

The Dogma Defined, 44; Committee of Ten and Other 
Authorities Quoted, 44-46; Analogous Facts in 
Physical Sphere, 46-47; Relations of Body and Mind, 
48; Convertibility of Cognition, Feeling, and Will, 
48-49; Convertibility of Intellectual Activities,. 49- 
55; Applications of Conclusions Reached, 55-59; 
Recapitulation, 59; Origin of the Dogma of Formal 
Discipline, 60-61. 



6 CONTENTS. 

III. THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE AND ENERGY 
APPLIED TO SOME PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEMS. 

Congruence Denned, 62; Bodily Activities as Congruous 
or Incongruous, 63; Physical and Psychic States as 
Congruous or Incongruous, 63; Fundamental Psychic 
Elements as Congruous or Incongruous, 64-67; Ped- 
agogical Rules Deduced from the Survey, 68; Intel- 
lectual Activities as Congruous or Incongruous, 69-70; 
Mutual Opposition and Reciprocal Aid, 70-72; Prin- 
ciples of Congruence Involve Selection and Grouping 
of Studies, 72-73; Laws of Mental Energy Stated, 
" 72-73; Rules of Teaching Deduced, 74-77; Laws of 
Specific and Generic Power Stated and Applied, 77- 
80; The Teacher and the Text-Book, 80-84; College 
and University Electives, 84-86; Graduate Study, 
86-88; Over-Specialization, 88-90. 

IV. THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 
Science and Art Defined, 91-92; Two Aspects of Art, 
92-95; Theoretical Relations of Science and Art, 
95-96; Knowing and Doing, 96-99; The Greek and 
Roman "Arts," 99-100; Practical Relations of Science 
and Art, 100-103; Reasons why Teachers Should 
Study the Science of Teaching, 103-105; Reasons 
why Teachers Should Study the Art of Teaching, 105- 
107; Order of Theoretical and Practical Courses in 
Pedagogy, 108-110; The Practice School, 110-112. 

V. "CALVINISM" AND "AVERAGING" IN EDUCATION. 

Introduction, 113; Calvinism Stated by President Eliot, 
114; Work and Play, 115-118; Conception of Train- 
ing Involves the Hard and Disagreeable, 118-122; 
President Eliot on ' ' What Everybody Ought to 
Know, "122-123; President Eliot on Averaging and 



CONTENTS. 7 

Uniformity, 123-127; Archdeacon Farrar on Variety 
of Talents, 127; Cultivation of this Variety, 127-133; 
Order Considered, 133-135; Power to Govern and to 
Teach, 135-137; The Teacher Question, 187. 

VI. PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 

President Eliot's "Forum" Article Summarized, 138- 
139; The Indictment Embraces Modern Progress, 
139-140; How Far True, 140-143; The Panacea 
Tendency, 143-144; Tendency to Exalt Human 
Institutions, 144-145; Tendency to Exaggerate the 
Functions of the School, 145-146; Its True Function, 
146-149; Operations of the Mind that Education 
Should Develop, 149; Failure of the Elementary 
School, 150-151; Defects of Secondary and Higher 
Education, 151-152; President Eliot's Prescription, 
152-153; Observations on, 153-160; Standard of Edu- 
cation the Ability to Deal with Social and Political 
Problems, 160; Difficulty of Such Problems, 160-163; 
Feeling and Will Factors in Human Affairs, 163-164. 

VII. THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR IN THE UNIVERSITY 
AND COLLEGE. 

The Pedagogical Chair in Germany, Scotland, and the 
United States, 166; Definitions of Education, 167-169; 
Research and Teaching Fundamental Functions of 
the University, 169; Education as a Science, 169; 
Duty of the University to Investigate, 169-170; Duty 
to Investigate History of Education, 170-171; Prac- 
tical Phases of the Subject, including the Duty of 
the University to Furnish Society with Teachers, 
171-178; History of Teaching in the Old Universities, 
179-181, 



8 CONTENTS, 

VIII. THE CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDU- 
CATION. 

What is Meant by the ''Culture Value," 182-183; Educa- 
tional Systems a Branch of L,aw and of Institutional 
History, 183-184; Educational Systems Born of Phi- 
losophies, Religions, Civilizations, with Examples, 
184-190; Reflex Influence of Education upon Civili- 
zation, 191-192; Value of Educational Intelligence, 
192; Defective Knowledge of Educated Men, 193; 
Defect of Books of History, 193-194; Cautionary 
Remark, 195-196. 

IX THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 
The Teacher must Understand the Ends of Teaching, 
197-198; The Fundamental Facts of Education, 198- 
199; The Teacher's Function, 199-200; The Two As- 
pects of Knowledge, Academical and Professional, 
200-201; Distribution of Emphasis, 201-202; Academ- 
ical Preparation not Sufficient, 203; Must Precede Pro- 
fessional, 203-205. 

X. HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 

Report of Conference on History to the Committee of 
Ten, 206; Nature and Growth of Mind, 206-207; 
Secondary Educational Agents, 207-208; History 
Deals with Actions of Men, 208; The Record of 
Human Experience, 209; Educational Value of, 209; 
Should Receive more Attention in the Schools, 210; 
At what Time to be Introduced, 211; Ziller's Double 
Series, 211-212; Historical Value of Stories, 212-213; 
Programme of the Conference, 213-214; Programme 
of Elementary Schools of Baden, 214; Advantages 
of German Teaching over American Teaching, 215; 



CONTENTS. 9 

Order of Topics, 215-216; Facts the Staple of History, 
217; Comparative View of English and American 
Students, 217-219; Intensive Study of a Period or 
Subject, 219-220; Coordination, 220; Teaching 
Civics, 220-221; Value of Vernacular Studies, 221- 
222. 

XL THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF 
CHILDREN. 

Apperception Denned, 223-224; Illustrated, 225-226; In- 
fluence of Environment on the Mind, 226; Con- 
clusions Flowing from Doctrine of Apperception, 227- 
230; Material Things and Spiritual Ideas, 231; Three 
Spheres in which Religion Moves, 231-232; Origin of 
Moral and Civic Habits and Ideas, 232-234; Relation 
of Religion to Ethics, 235; Rousseau's Ideas, 235-237; 
Need of Positive Teaching, 237; Words of Admoni- 
tion, 237-239; Intellectual Apparatus that Directly 
Affects the Spiritual Life Simple, 239; Material for 
Spiritual Instruction, 240; Prudential Remarks, 241- 
243. 

XII. PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 

Beginnings of Popular Education in England, 244-245; 
Government Intervention, 245-246: Government In- 
spectorship of Schools, 246; The "Code", 247; Origin 
of Payment by Results, 247-249; Dissatisfaction with 
Existing System of Popular Education, 249; Ele- 
mentary Education Act of 1870, 249-250; Features of 
the Act, 250-251; Payment by Results Explained, 
251-254; The Principle Characterized by Matthew 
Arnold, 254; Results Of, 254-256; Consequences if 
the System Should be Established in the United 
States, 257. 



IO CONTENTS. 

XIII. THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 

Character of the School System of a Republican State, 
258-259; Relations of the People to the Schools, 259; 
Schools as an Organization of Business and as an Or- 
ganization of Instruction, 260-262; Constitution and 
Powers of the Board, 262-265; Selection of Board 
Members, 265-269; Mode of Board Administration, 
including Executive Departments, 269-272; Plan 
Recommended would Lead to Reforms, 272-273. 

XIV. THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 

Status of the Superintendency, 272-273; Supervision of 
Schools Originally Exercised by School Committees 
and Boards, 273-275; The Principal or Master, 275; 
Visiting Committees, 276; Increasing Complexity of 
School Systems Leads to Fuller Organization, 276- 
277; The High School as a Factor in School Organi- 
zation, 277-278; Dr. Fitch on Powers and Duties of 
Superintendents, 278-279; Powers and Duties of the 
Superintendent not Denned by Law, 279-280; 
Fuller Specialization to be Anticipated, 280-281; 
Pedagogical Superintendents and Business Superin- 
tendents, 281 : Future Movements along These Lines, 
281-282; In Large Cities, 282-283; In Small Cities, 
283-285. 

XV. THE EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OE THE MODERN 
STATE. 

The Progress of Democracy in State and Church, 289- 
291; In Education, 291-295; How shall the People 
be Educated? 295; Cost of Education in the United 
States, 295-296; Voluntary Effort Inadequate, 296- 
298; Failure of Voluntary Effort in England, 298- 
302; Only the State can Make Education Universal, 



CONTENTS. II 

302; Educational Expenditures of England and 
France, 303; Character of the Modern State, 304; 
What State Education Means, 305-309; Difference 
between the Ancient and the Modern State, 309-310; 
Archbishop Ireland on Public Education Quoted, 
310-311; Democratic Spirit of Modern Education, 
311-312. 

XVI. SOME SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION 

IN THE UNITED STATES. 

Montesquieu Quoted, 313; Relation of Education to Civil 
Society as a Whole, 314-315: Areas of Territory Oc- 
cupied by Certain Maxima and Minima of Popula- 
tion, 316-317: Economical Significance of the Statis- 
tics, 317-318; Educational Significance, 318-321; 
Means of Communication, 321; North Atlantic and 
South Atlantic States Considered in Respect to 
Density of Population, 322-323; City Population, 
324; City Population as an Educational Factor, 
324-325; The Race Question in Education, 325- 
328; Value of Property in the United States, 
328-329; Educational Bearings of its Distribution, 
330-332; Ratio of Adult Males to Population, 
332; Illiteracy, 333-334; Comparative Statistics of 
North Atlantic and South Atlantic States, 335-336; 
Reflections Suggested by, 336-338. 

XVII. TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME 
Church of S. Clemente, History of, 339-340; A Type of 

Rome, 341; Human Questions Presented to the Vis- 
itor to Rome, 341-342 ; Introduction of Public Schools, 
342; First Year of Public Schools, 343; Growth of 
the System, 343-344; Historical View of 1890, 344- 
345; Educational Expenditures, 346; The School 



12 CONTENTS. 

Regina Margherita, 347-348; Elementary Instruction 
in Italy Compared with Germany, 348; Salaries of 
Teachers, 349; Decrease of Illiteracy, 350. 

XVIII. RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE SCHOOLS OF 
GERMANY. 

Atheism, Skepticism, etc., in Germany, 352; Not Due 
co L,ack of Religious Teaching in the Schools, 353; 
Schools of Saxony and Prussia, 353; The Saxon 
Course in Religion, 354-356; Course Compulsory, 356; 
Royal Decrees of Prussia, 357; State Church Idea, 
358; Confessional Schools, 358-359; Moral Results 
Considered, 359-360; The Established Churches, 
360-363; Character of Religious Teaching, 363; Re- 
lation of Dogma and lyife, 363-364: System a Fail- 
ure in Prussia, 365; The Bible in American Schools, 
366. 

XIX. EDUCATION IN SWITZERLAND. 

The Swiss Centennials of 1891, 367; History of Culture 
in Switzerland, 367-368; Education a Matter of Fed- 
eral and Cantonal Concern, 368; Provisions of Fed- 
eral Constitution, 368-369; The Polytechnicum, 369; 
Compulsion, 369-370; Cantons Compared, 371-372; 
Educational Statistics, 372-373; Teachers and In- 
spectors, 373-374; School Control, 374; Salaries, 
374-375. 

XX. THE BACKWARDNESS OF POPULAR EDUCATION 
IN ENGLAND. 
The Problem Stated, 376; The Established Church, 
376-377; Aristocracy, 377-378; The Character of the 
English Mind, 378-380; The Universities, 380; The 
Word ' 'Prohibition, "380-381; Oxford, 381-382; In- 
dividual Initiative, 382; Mr. Bryce's Simile, 383; 
Different Course of Events in the Northern King- 
dom, 383-384. 




STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 
I. 

SOURCES OF HUMAN CULTIVATION. 

O other transformation that men are permitted 
to witness is so marked in character as the 
transformation wrought in the mind of one of 
their own number in his passage from feeble 
infancy to the maturity of adult life. No other is so in- 
teresting, so important, or so necessary to be understood. 
The seed and the plant, the egg and the bird, are not to 
be mentioned in comparison. Only one transformation 
that history presents to our view is worthy to be com- 
pared to it, and that is the analogous transformation seen 
in the life of a tribe or a society of men as it passes from 
low savagery to high civilization. The causes that effect 
this transformation in the individual man I propose to 
examine, offering also some remarks on the transforma- 
tion itself. In other words, I am about to map out the 
territory covered by the phrase, "Human Cultivation." 

It is first to be observed that the subject presents diffi- 
culties that are in part insuperable. The cultivation of 
the individual begins in the mysterious region of infancy; 
and as no memory of what occurred in this region in our 
own case remains, and as the infant can give us no account 
whatever of his own experience, and would not be an in- 
fant if he could, we are thrown back upon our own 
observation for facts and our own interpretation of the 
facts observed. But such observation and interpretation 



14 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

are peculiarly difficult. Facts of the spirit are the most 
subtile and elusive of all facts, and particularly those of 
the infant spirit. With great reason has it been asked: 

Who can tell what a baby thinks ? 
Who can follow the gossamer links 
By which the manikin feels his way 
Out from the shore of the great unknown, 
Blind, and wailing, and alone, 
Into the light of day ? 

What does he think of his mother's eyes? 
What does he think of his mother's hair? 
What of the cradle-roof that flies 
Forward and backward through the air ? 
What does he think of his mother's breast — 
Bare and beautiful, smooth and white, 
Seeking it ever with fresh delight — 
Cup of his life and couch of his rest ? 
What does he think when her quick embrace 
Presses his hand and buries his face 
Deep where the heart-throbs sink and swell, 
With a tenderness she can never tell ? 

But the fact that we are unable to answer these ques- 
tions fully is no excuse for not making the best answer 
that we can. I^et us then begin with the most elementary 
facts of the mental life. 

The first of these is the mind itself. While we are 
unable to tell what the mind is, we readily discover 
some very interesting things about it. First, it is 
active, self -active as the philosophers say, and this activ- 
ity is its characteristic attribute. Through its activity 
the mind grows or expands; or, to express the same fact 
in other language, it accumulates experience or gath- 
ers knowledge. The mind is one, a unit, and has no 
parts, but it acts in several different fields or spheres, or 
has a variety of experiences, and in this way its so-called 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 1 5 

powers or faculties are developed. Again, the mind grows 
or acquires knowledge only through its activity. And 
still further, the mental growth or accumulation that 
comes in this way we call cultivation and education, using 
those terms in their broadest sense. 

The mind cannot act, and so cannot grow, if it is left 
to itself. Mental activity depends upon stimulation or 
excitation, and this can come in the first instance only 
from the outside. An object to be known is as essential to 
knowledge as a mind to know. Accordingly, the second 
elementary fact to be considered is some reality external 
to the mind itself — what is sometimes called the world. 

Perhaps some would pause here. But it will conduce to 
clearness to recognize a third fundamental educational 
condition. This is the mind and reality in contact. The 
speculative relation of the two factors we may leave to the 
metaphysicians; the practical fact of contact we must 
emphasize. Until such relation is established, there is no 
mental activity, and so no mental growth; the moment it 
is established, activity begins, and, progressively, the 
mind knows, objects are known, knowledge begins to 
exist, and education takes its rise. 

Properly speaking, knowledge has no existence outside 
of the mind; it is a continuous state of mind; if mind 
should cease to know, knowledge would cease to exist. 1 

1 "But Casaubon's books, whatever their worth, were not the 
man. The scholar is greater than his books. The result of his 
labors is not so many thousand pages in folio, but himself. The 
'Paradise Lost' is a grand poem, but how much grander was the 
living soul that spoke it! Yet poetry is much more of the essence 
of the soul, is more nearly a transcript of the poet's mind, than 
a volume of 'notes' can be of the scholar's mind. It has been 
often said of philosophy that it is not a doctrine but a method. 
No philosophical systems, as put upon paper, embody philosophy. 
Philosophy perishes in the moment that you would teach it. 
Knowledge is not the thing known, but the mental habit which 
knows. So it is with learning." — Mark Pattison: Isaac Casau- 
bon, p. 488. 



l6 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Men do indeed speak of books and libraries as containing 
knowledge. What books and libraries do in fact contain, 
is symbols of knowledge that are dead and meaningless 
until they are read by a mind that knows them. However, 
as usage justifies the objective sense of the word, and it is 
convenient, we may use knowledge in that signification. 

The relation of knowledge to the mind may properly 
occupy our attention a little longer. That such a 
relation exists, men must have discovered the moment 
that knowledge became the subject of reflection, and 
they expressed the fact in the only way that was open 
to them. The relation is a philosophical idea, and they 
conceived it, as they conceived other philosophical ideas, 
under a physical image. The conception of knowledge is 
governed by the conception of the mind and is represented 
in the same way. Philosophy having, for reasons that 
are here immaterial, no vocabulary of its own, borrows 
one from physics and then proceeds to spiritualize it. 
Some examples of this process will emphasize the fact and 
also help on the general inquiry. 

One of the earliest and best educational metaphors 
makes the mind an organism and knowledge food for its 
nourishment. Sometimes it is assumed to resemble a 
plant and sometimes an animal. This is the most common 
way of representing knowledge or doctrine in the Bible. 
The man who meditates in the law of the L,ord is like a tree 
planted by the rivers of water that brings forth its fruit in 
its season. Disciples who have neglected their opportuni- 
ties to learn have need of milk and not of strong meat. 
Kvery one that uses milk is a babe, while strong meat 
belongs to them that are of full age. The underlying idea 
is that of growth or development. As a new-born babe, 
the disciple should desire the pure milk of the word that 
he may grow thereby. The terms that are employed to 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 1 7 

represent this view of education are considerably varied. 
The mind "hungers" and "thirsts"; it "digests" and 
"assimilates;" it is "nourished" and "strengthened," 
while the teacher ' 'feeds' ' the pupil. It is in this way that 
the New Testament presents the relation of the minister to 
the church. He is a pastor or shepherd, and is enjoined to 
feed his flock. The metaphors that fall into this group 
may be called biological metaphors, as they are sug- 
gested by the phenomena of life. 

A second group of pedagogical metaphors, almost as 
common as the biological ones, are derived from archi- 
tecture. The mind is a structure or edifice that is ' 'built, ' ' 
' ' constructed, " or " formed ' ' ; knowledge is building- 
material; the teacher is an artificer, and his educational 
ideal is a plan or model. According to this conception, 
the mind has a foundation, apartments, stories, and win- 
dows (although this last metaphor is used also when 
knowledge is considered as light). This imagery is also 
of frequent use in the Bible. The terms ' ' building ' ' and 
' ' temple ' ' are used to symbolize the Church and also the 
individual Christian. An Apostle likens himself to a 
' ' wise master-builder. ' ' Great stress is laid on ' ' edifica- 
tion " and " edifying," or " upbuilding;" charity "edi- 
fies." The statement, "He that speaks (that is, in 
the church) edifieth himself ' ' recognizes the pedagogical 
truth that to teach is an excellent way to learn — a truth 
that has been repeated times without number from an- 
cient days. 

Thirdly, mental growth is pictured in language 
that properly belongs to physical exercise; excitement of 
some kind stimulates a muscle or nerve to action, and 
this again stimulates nutrition. But this nutrition does 
more than simply supply the waste that activity has 
caused; the muscle or nerve is strengthened or enlarged. 



l8 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The words " exercise " and " discipline," and even " ac- 
tivity ' ' itself, fall into this category. Here we meet all 
the pedagogical metaphors that are furnished by the 
gymnasium and the playground. Very naturally, con- 
sidering their peculiar genius, and especially their view 
of physical perfection, the Greeks made this a favorite 
mode of representing pedagogical facts and ideas, just as 
it was natural that the L,atins, with their peculiar genius, 
should draw their educational vocabulary mainly from 
agriculture and war. 

Warfare has made its contribution to the pedagogical 
vocabulary. " Drill " comes to us from this source, and 
so does ' ' education' ' itself. This last means etymologic- 
ally to ''draw out "or to "lead out," and it was orig- 
inally applied to physical acts merely. Thus, a soldier 
"educates" his sword from its sheath, and a general 
"educates " his army in battle array. 

These are a few of the many pedagogical metaphors. 
There has been some discussion of the relative values of 
the several groups. The truth is that no analogical theory, 
nor all such theories together, exhaust the content of 
mind and education. These metaphors are but adumbra- 
tions of spiritual facts that we are unable to express fully. 
The mechanical analogies balance the biological ones, 
and vice versa; but the mind is neither a seed nor a build- 
ing, or a combination of both; neither is the teacher a 
gardener or a carpenter, or half one and half the other. 
The pedagogical metaphors all present interesting phases or 
facets of the one grand process and result; they supplement 
and correct one another; but they present the mind as a 
kaleidoscope and not as a living unity. We may observe 
further that the English language, owing to its compos- 
ite character, is particularly rich in pedagogical terms, 
so that the English-speaking teacher is able to look at his 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 1 9 

work, through his own speech, from more points of view 
than any other teacher. 

The causes of mental stimulation, and so of mental 
growth, are divisible into two great groups, the primary 
and the secondary. 

I. THE PRIMARY GROUP. 

These require, at the present stage of the discussion, 
no general characterization. They are divisible into three 
sub-groups. 

1. Facts of Nature; External Realities. — Every material 
object presents to the mind one or more points of con- 
tact, and as soon as the mind seizes upon one of them 
that marvelous stream of activity which, at different 
stages and under different aspects, we call sensation, per- 
ception, conception, memory, apperception, thought, 
imagination, pleasure and pain, choice and volition, begins 
to flow. The child's first world, properly speaking, is 
neither external nor internal; he does not discriminate 
between his own body and the surrounding objects, and 
much less between his mind and such objects; all things 
are presented to him as one inseparable mass. Moreover, 
the child's first world is a very small world, embracing 
only the objects that lie within his ken. At the very first, 
he has no "ken"; he is blind and deaf, and merely feels; 
when he begins to see and to hear, he sees and hears things 
in close connection with his eyes and ears; and it is but 
slowly that he conceives the ideas of separateness, exter- 
nality, depth, and distance. For his purpose the poet has 
chosen his objects well; still, the mother's eyes, hair, and 
breast, and the cradle-roof, as particular objects of knowl- 
edge, mark a considerably advanced stage in the child's 
mental life. I shall not seek to analyze the processes by 



20 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

which the child's homogeneous world is gradually iesolved 
into a heterogeneous one. My main purpose is to em- 
phasize the fact that those material objects which are right 
about the child are the things that first fasten themselves 
upon his mind, and so are the first to be known. In the 
first stages of knowledge the child is wholly at the mercy 
of his environment, as much so as the whelp in the kennel 
or the cub in the jungle. Furthermore, this environment 
is for the most part predetermined; for the rest, it is con- 
trolled by the nurse, the mother, and other members of the 
family; at most, such selective power of objects as the 
child's own mind can assert is purely instinctive and spon- 
taneous. How important an element such natural selection 
is, we have no means of knowing, but it is absolutely limited 
by the environment. It is worth remarking, too, that the 
influence of environment when the child-nature is soft 
and easily colorable is great, far beyond our power to 
measure it. 

We will assume that the first objects to arrest a child's 
attention, and to be separated from the surrounding mass 
of objects, are his own hands. But they do not satisfy 
him. He reaches out to other and remoter things. 
Through every inlet and avenue sensations, which form 
the raw material of knowledge, are poured into his mind 
and are slowly elaborated into ideas. The child is an 
inductive philosopher. He learns his first lessons by 
observation, experiment, and reflection. Every circle 
that he makes about the room in his nurse's arms, every 
excursion beyond its walls, is an exploring expedition in 
the dark continent that shuts him in. Biting on his rub- 
ber, twisting the neck of his doll, beating the floor with 
his heels and the table with a spoon, he lays the founda- 
tion of his future scientific knowledge. Progressively, he 
comes into contact with further objects; he conquers the 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 21 

yard, street, and field on his way to the conquest of the 
mountain, the sea, and the sky. 

While we call the child's mental progress slow, it is 
really rapid considering all the factors that enter into 
the account. It would be immeasureably slower than 
it is, did not our first ideas assist us in acquiring later 
ones. As has been said, the child's ' 'perceptions are not 
heaped up like dead treasures, but almost as soon as ac- 
quired they become living forces that assist in the assimi- 
lation of new perceptions, thus strengthening the power 
of apprehension. They are the contents of the soul, that 
now permanently assert themselves in the act of percep- 
tion. For wherever it is- at all possible, the child refers 
the new to the related older ideas. With the aid of 
familiar perceptions, he appropriates that which is foreign 
to him and conquers with the arms of apperception the 
outer world which assails his senses." 1 

2. The Acts of Men; The Objective Realities of Life. — 
From the first the child is brought into contact with a 
second order of facts. These are the deeds of men, which, 
in due course of time, are discriminated from the move- 
ments of things and the actions of animals. Their dis- 
tinguishing character, which, however, the child does not 
at first perceive, is that they express intelligence, feeling, 
and will. Further, the child discovers that some things he 
may do, and some things he may not do. This is not due 
to natural barriers, but to human barriers. He does not 
at first know the power of a will as a will, but only as a 
force; but progressively control, restraint, obedience, 
authority, law, rule, and government are learned as mere 
objective facts. They are but slowly separated from the 
analogous physical facts, and are never fully separated 
until the child has found the cause and the signification 
of social facts in the third group of primary realities. 

1 Dr. Lange: Apperception, p. 55. 



22 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

3. Facts of the Mind; Spiritual Realities. — It is in 
the nursery and the home also that the child first meets 
the things of the spirit. Here it is that he learns those 
fundamental ideas of government and social relation 
that are afterwards developed in general society and in 
the state. 

At some time the child begins faintly to discriminate 
between the cradle-roof and the nurse who rocks it. The 
time comes when he begins to see that his mother's breast, 
hair, and eyes are not his mother. He makes no account 
of definitions; he has no use for "matter" and "mind," 
"body" and "spirit;" but the elementary facts of rational 
existence begin to orb themselves in his consciousness. 
His own ideas and feelings interpret to him the ideas and 
feelings of others. Other minds are measured by his own 
mind. He may beat his hobby-horse and his nurse 
indifferently when they displease him; but this act, which 
originates in blind impulse and is strengthened by habit, 
nevertheless hastens a fuller discrimination of the two 
orders of being. 

The child's higher education now begins in earnest. 
He has felt the power of spiritual realities. As he learns 
hardness by beating the floor with his heels; resistance, 
by bumping his head against the wall or door; strength, 
by breaking his toys; heat, by burning his hand; weight, 
by dropping a hammer on his toe, and sharpness, by cut- 
ting his finger with a knife: so he learns what intelligence, 
feeling, and will, order, right, and wrong, aversion, 
sympathy, and affection, are through contact with nurse, 
parents, brothers, sisters, and playmates. He discerns 
the spiritual elements that constitute authority and gov- 
ernment, approval and disapproval, rewards and punish- 
ment, which before had been to him but objective facts. 
And not only are these ideas formed, but the institutions 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 23 

that express them are in time duly recognized — the family, 
society, and the state. 

The child finally becomes introspective and knows him- 
self. On the basis of the natural consciousness, self-con- 
sciousness is developed. His ideas and feelings are reali- 
ties that stimulate his mind and create new realities. The 
subjective becomes objective. Old thought becomes ma- 
terial for new thought. It is very true that the normal child 
develops slowly along this line. He first marks off his body 
from other objects. Then he distinguishes between his 
body and his mind, and learns the meaning of the word 
"self." Few are the persons who ever had or, at least, 
can recall such an experience as the one related by 
Richter. " On a certain forenoon I stood, a very young 
child, within the house-door, and was looking out toward 
the wood pile, as, in an instant, the inner revelation, 'lam 
I,' like lightning from heaven, flashed and stood brightly 
before me; in that moment had I seen myself as I, for the 
first time and forever." 1 But this revelation, when it 
comes, marks the next step in development, following the 
discrimination between the tilings of the body and the 
things of the spirit. 

The baby new to earth and sky, 

What time his tender palm, is prest 
Against the circle of the breast, 

Has never thought that "this is I:" 

But as he grows he gathers much, 
And learns the use of "I" and "me," 
And finds "I am not what I see," 

And other than the things I touch. 

So rounds he to a separate mind, 

From whence clear memory may begin, 
As thro' the frame that binds him in 

His isolation grows defined. 

1 Quoted by Dr. Porter : The Human Intellect, p. 101. 



24 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The birth of self-consciousness marks the entrance of 
the child upon the third and last stage of primary educa- 
tion, in the present sense of that term. Its ethical im- 
portance is very great. Moral thoughtfulness now begins, 
feeble of course at first. Man communes with his own 
heart, and his spirit makes diligent search. He com- 
munes with his own heart upon his bed, and is still. He 
examines himself, whether he is in the faith. 

The three groups of facts that have just been described 
are the primordial sources of human cultivation. With 
them the education of the race began. With them the 
education of every member of the race begins. In both 
the general sphere and the individual sphere, they ante- 
date teachers and schools and education as those terms are 
commonly understood. It can hardly be too much insisted 
upon that, in direct attrition between the mind and nature, 
human society, and the mind itself natural knowledge, 
moral knowledge, and philosophical knowledge originate. 
Man's cultivation can never begin with books and libra- 
ries. Both history and personal experience tell us that 
there is an earlier culture; a culture derived from the 
earth, the sky, and the sea, the family, the camp, and the 
market-place, and from communion with the thoughts and 
intents of the heart. There are secondary sources of 
cultivation, which we shall soon describe, but it is these 
primitive culture-elements that make them possible. 
Nicely to define the relations of the three groups of 
primary factors, or to measure their comparative value, is 
beside our present purpose. Three or four remarks will 
suffice. 

The three groups appear in life in the order in which 
they have been presented. Still, they are all found 
in the child-mind from an early age, and from the time 
of their full appearance they run side by side through 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 25 

his mental life. Their interaction is constant and powerful. 
They can be no more separated than cognition, feeling, 
and will can be separated in the stream of consciousness. 
They are not of uniform prominence in all persons, or in 
the same person in all periods of life. Some persons live 
in nature, some among men, some in their own minds. 
Children again live in their senses, adults in reason, the 
old in memory. The speculative man lives in thought, 
the sensitive man in his feelings, the practical man in his 
deeds. The three groups of factors have each their pecu- 
liar educational value; they cannot be made to take one 
another's place; and they are all essential to a well-ordered 
education. 

II. THE SECONDARY GROUP. 

The educational factors that we have been considering 
are powerfully reenforced by a secondary group. As men 
originally acquired knowledge through attrition with the 
primordial sources of cultivation, they began to communi- 
cate back and forth, and so became teachers one of an- 
other. In this way there grew up a common fund of 
experience or culture that has played a prodigious part in 
the education of the world. Tradition and authority 
appeared early, and henceforth second-hand, or deriv- 
ative, knowledge supplemented first-hand, or primitive 
knowledge. These new agents may be divided into four 
sub-groups. 

1. Oral langtmge. — This stands first in power,, if not in 
time. Speech is the most direct, the most complete, and the 
most rapid mode of conveying thought and feeling. The 
matter conveyed comes from one of two sources. One 
source is the speaker's own personal experience, the other 
the common fund or stock of experience that is called tra- 
dition. In the narrow sense tradition embraces facts, 



26 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

rules of conduct, sage councils, generalizations of experi- 
ence, old wives' wisdom, and prudential maxims that have 
been handed down by word of mouth through successive 
generations. Tradition in its large sense will come before 
us further on; here it should be remarked that the total 
effect of oral language upon men's minds and lives, they 
are quite incapable of estimating. No doubt it is less than 
formerly, owing to the multiplication of artificial substi- 
tutes for the memory, but in the first stage of life it has 
suffered no diminution. 

2. Arts and Inventions. — Here we inventory the visible 
works through which man accomplishes his purposes 
(excluding only symbols proper and writing). These 
works range from the simple articles and utensils of com- 
mon life to the steamship, the city, and the Simplonroad. 
These objects are things, but they are more, since they 
express human thought and purpose. 

3. Symbols. — Here we catalogue those works of art the 
direct object of which is to express thought, sentiment, or 
feeling: the decorative art of the savage, the illustrations 
of scientific and literary books, the Sistine Madonna, and 
the Parthenon frieze. Symbolism and the practical arts 
are often found mixed. The idea of beauty allies itself 
with usefulness. 

4. Writing. — In this expression we include picture 
writing, hieroglyphics, and alphabets. It is a form of 
symbolism, but a form so unique in character, and so vast 
in its influence, that it well deserves to stand in a category 
by itself. 

It is quite impossible to exaggerate the influence of 
writing and printing on the communication of thought, 
and particularly on education. "It is the greatest inven- 
tion man has ever made," says Carlyle, "this of mark- 
ing down the unseen thought that is in him by written 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 27 

characters. It is a kind of second speech, almost as 
miraculous as the first." 1 And again: "Universities arose 
while there were yet no books procurable; while a man, 
for a single book, had to give an estate of land. That, in 
those circumstances, when a man had some knowledge to 
communicate, he should do it by gathering the learners 
round him, face to face, was a necessity for him. If you 
wanted to know what Abelard knew, you must go and 
listen to Abelard. Thousands, as many as thirty thou- 
sand, went to hear Abelard and that metaphysical the- 
ology of his Once invent printing, you meta- 
morphosed all universities, or superseded them. The 
teacher needed not now to gather men personally round 
him, that he might speak to them what he knew: print it 
in a book, and all learners far and wide, for a trifle, had 
it each at his own fireside, much more effectually to learn 
it." 3 

Such in outline are the secondary sources of knowledge 
and mental discipline. The analysis might be carried 
further, but this one is comprehensive and will answer - 
our purpose. The group suggests some observations of 
importance. 

1. The first of these observations is that these last 
sources of cultivation are plainly secondary and derivative. 
They mean nothing and serve no useful purpose save 
as they rest upon a previous cultivation. Properly 
speaking they are all arts. What Professor J. S- Blackie 
says of books is true of all of them. "They are not 
creative powers in any sense; they are merely helps, 
instruments, tools; and even as tools they are only 
artificial tools, superadded to those with which the wise 

1 The Hero as Divinity. 

2 The Heto as Man of Letters. 



28 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

prevision of Nature has equipped us, like telescopes and 
microscopes, whose assistance in many researches reveals 
unimagined wonders, but the use of which should never 
tempt us to undervalue or to neglect the exercise of our 
own eyes." 1 A book is nothing but a thing to a child 
until he has accumulated a fund of first-hand mental 
experience that will furnish the apperceiving centers nec- 
essary to enable him to understand it, as well as mastered 
the symbolism of the printed page. The "parchment 
roll' ' is not 

the holy river, 
From which one draught shall slake the thirst forever. 
The quickening power of science only he 
Can know, from whose own soul it gushes free. 

2. It has been suggested that a book is a thing before 
it is a book. This suggestion leads to the wider observa- 
tion that arts of all kinds are at once tools for the doing 
of some work, and things or objects of study in them- 
selves. As tools, they are secondary sources of knowledge 
and discipline; as things, they fall among the primordial 
factors. In this sense every art is also a fact of science. 
And the more important the art is, the more interesting 
as an object of knowledge. All the arts of communica- 
tion are subjects to be studied. It may be said in general 
that the higher the purpose the art subserves, and the 
greater the amount of thought that it displays, the more 
interesting and valuable it is as a subject of study. And 
this is the reason why the things of the spirit, using that 
term in this wide sense, rank so high as educational in- 
struments. This is the core of Humanism. Still more, 
it is only as an art or instrument is understood that it 
becomes significant and in the highest degree useful. 

1 Self- Culture, p. 1. 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 29 

Thus, the primary and the secondary elements of teaching 
mingle. Even the most mechanical of the mental opera- 
tions are not wholly mechanical. 

Still more stress should be laid upon the educational 
value of spiritual realities. We observe objects and form 
ideas of them. These ideas are merely pictures or images 
of things, in the first instance. But this is not all; they 
become themselves objects of study, furnishing the richest 
tho ught -m ater ial . 

3. Once more, thought is before expression, and is its 
cause. But the connection between the two is the closest 
that we can conceive. Shunning the intricacies of this 
old problem, we should not fail to remark that, practically, 
the mind and language are inseparable. They strengthen 
or weaken one another. Neither one can be studied in a 
fruitful way without the other. If we begin with thought, 
we find ourselves attending to its vesture; if we begin with 
language, we cannot dismiss its content. ' 'Speech," says 
Sir William Hamilton, * 'is the godmother of knowledge." 
''A sign is necessary to give stability to our intellectual 
progress — to establish each step in our advance as a new 
starting point for our advance to another beyond. A 
country may be overrun by an armed host, but it is only 
conquered by the establishment of fortresses. Words are 

the fortresses of thought Language is to 

the mind precisely what the arch is to the tunnel. The 
power of thinking and the power of excavation are not 
dependent on the word in the one case, on the mason-work 
in the other; but without these subsidiaries, neither pro- 
cess could be carried on beyond its rudimentary, commence- 
ment." 1 Still another great scholar has said: "The hu- 
man mind has never grappled with any subject of thought 
without a proper store of language, and without an ap- 

x Logic, Lecture VIII. 



30 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

paratus appropriate to logical method." 1 The closeness 
of the relation that we are remarking is shown by the 
fact that the same word often means content and expres- 
sion, as logos, ' 'speech, ' ' and ' 'word' ' itself. The New Testa- 
ment places great stress upon the Word, but the word is 
the doctrine. These reflections show very clearly that 
the primary and secondary facts of mental growth are so 
bound up together that they cannot in reality be separ- 
ated. 

4. The order in which the secondary factors appear 
in history, is also the order in which they appear in 
the life of the child surrounded by civilized society. 
We must, however, be on our guard against two mistakes. 
We may exaggerate the length of the intervals between 
the several factors of the secondary group, and also their 
time relations to the primitive group. We must not divide 
life into sharply-cut periods. Something depends upon 
aptitude, and something upon circumstances. Perhaps it 
is misleading to speak of intervals at all. All that is 
meant is that, in a general way, the analysis presented 
describes the historical order and the individual order in 
which the sources of human cultivation declare themselves. 
The important facts are these: In the normal child, all 
these agencies appear early, and they continue to act upon 
him side by side as long as he lives. They strengthen 
one another; they interact in a manner that defies analysis. 
Often it is difficult or impossible for one to tell in his own 
case, and still more in the case of another, from what 
source certain knowledge was derived. Persons differ, 
owing to personal character and environment. The human 
voice is sound before it is speech. A volume is first a 
thing, then a book. Art does wonders in substituting one 
sense for another, as in the case of I^aura Bridgeman, 

1 Sir H. S. Maine: Ancient Law. 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 3 1 

who could follow music by the sensations it produced in 
the bottom of her feet. Similarly, one man learns by 
conversation, by reading a book, or by looking at a picture 
what another gets by the direct use of his senses. Still, 
there is a limit to this substitution in both cases. Every 
sense and every educational agent has its own appropriate 
function that no other sense or agent can fully discharge. 
A man blind from birth may learn the whole color vocab- 
ulary, but he can have no conception of its meaning. 
The appropriate sense must always furnish a starting-point 
from which the mind may work through the other senses 
in the direction of substitution. Similarly, language, 
writing, and pictures can never take the place of a suitable 
grounding in the primal realities of sense and of the 
spirit. This fact must not be obscured. No human 
being's cultivation ever began with words of wisdom. 
The library is a sealed book save to him who already 
possesses the keys of knowledge. The command to keep 
out of the fire is significant only to those persons who 
have already learned by experience what the fire is. In 
this primal sense, therefore, the education of all men 
starts at the same place and proceeds by the same steps. 
5. The field where primary and secondary knowledge 
overlap is a wide one; within that field each kind has its 
own points of advantage and disadvantage. In general, 
first-hand knowledge is the more real and practical. Seeing 
is believing. All our terms of cognition, or nearly so, go 
back to the senses. Another's report of a fact or event may 
be as valuable practically as my own personal examination, 
or even more so, as in the case of expert knowledge, but 
speculatively the report never affects me in the same way. 
No man's description of Niagara or Mont Blanc equals the 
use of my own eyes. Second-hand knowledge, on the other 
hand, is commonly acquired far more rapidly and easily. 



32 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

If knowledge of the glaciers of Alaska, or of Yellow- 
stone Park, obtained from a book is less real and vivid than 
knowledge obtained by a personal visitation, it costs far 
less in time, money, and effort. It is impossible to imagine 
how the kingdom of knowledge would shrink up if men 
were thrown wholly back upon their own unaided facul- 
ties. As it is, the accumulations of the race are open to 
every man, limited only by his own power to receive and 
assimilate. We are sometimes enjoined never to tell a 
child anything that he can find out for himself. Taken 
as a rhetorical mode of emphasizing discovery or first- 
hand knowledge, the precept is well enough, but as a 
rule to be strictly followed it is both absurd and impos- 
sible. To leave the child to his own unaided efforts is 
telling the farmer of the Western prairies to throw aside 
his improved machinery and cultivate and harvest his 
crops with the rude implements used in Judea in the days 
of Boaz. Moreover, no man was ever reared in this way, 
or ever will be. Fortunately, the utter impracticability of 
the maxim, taken in its literal sense, leaves little proba- 
bility that it will be abused. The sound rule is, Do not 
tell the child too many things. I wish to know the dis- 
tance from Ann Arbor to Ypsilanti; why should I measure 
it myself so long as I can learn the distance from another ? 
I do not need to measure the road to Ypsilanti, but I do 
need to measure enough distances to enable me to under- 
stand the process and to understand, measureably at least, 
the distance-units that are employed in making them. 
What I need in general is a sufficient stock of first- 
hand knowledge suitable to equip me with apperceiving 
centers, then I am ready for second-hand knowledge. 1 

1 ' 'Learning teacheth more in one yeare than experience in 
twentie: And learning teacheth fafelie, when experience maketh 
mo miferable than wife. He hafardeth fore, that waxeth wife by 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 33 

What has been said answers, in general,, the question 
whether the study of elementary science should begin 
with a book or in a laboratory. The child must observe 
and experiment; but it is not wise to set him adrift in 
nature or in the laboratory. Much the same may be said 
of the teaching of law, whether it shall begin with cases 
or principles, be inductive or deductive. 

6. The real point that is involved in the last paragraph 
may be stated more broadly. In the intellectual sphere, 
authority is the acceptance of facts, ideas, and judg- 
ments at second hand, on the ground of another person's 
real or supposed knowledge. The learner does not him- 
self know the fact or idea in the primitive sense of that 
term. Authority, therefore, is opposed to personal knowl- 
edge or reason. There are two kinds, the first relating 
to facts and the second to judgments or opinions. The 
authority that rested so long, and so heavily, upon the 
mind of Europe, and that was shattered by the rise of free 
inquiry, while embracing both elements, placed the 

experience. An vnhappie Mafter he is, that is made cunning by 
manie thippe wrakes: A miferable merchant, that is neither riche 
or wife, but after fom bankroutes. It is coftlie wifdom, that is 
bought by experience. We know by experience it felfe, that it is 
a meruelous paine, to finde oute but a fhort waie, by long wander- 
ing. And furelie, he that wold proue wife by experience, he maie 
be wittie in deede, euen like a fwift runner, that runneth fast out of 
his waie, and upon the night, he knoweth not whither. And 
verilie they be feweft of number, that be happie or wife by vn- 
learned experience. And looke well vpon the former life of thofe 
fewe, whether your example be old or yonge, who without learn- 
ing haue gathered, by long experience, a little wifdom, and fom 
happiness: and whan you do confider, what mifcheife they haue 
committed, what dangers they haue efcaped (and yet xx. for one, 
do perifhe in the aduenture) then think well with your felfe, 
whether ye wold, that your owne fon, ihould cum to wifdom and 
happiness, by the waie of foch experience or no." — Roger Ascham: 
The Scholemaster. 



34 



STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 



emphasis upon opinion. It has often been contended that 
authority does not confer knowledge. L,ocke, for ex- 
ample, declared it to be ' 'madness' ' to persuade ourselves 
that we see by another man's eyes, while Carlyle said: 
"Except thine own eye have got to see it, except 
thine own soul have victoriously struggled to clear vision 
and belief of it, what is the thing seen or the thing be- 
lieved by another or by never so many others ? " * We 
shall look more carefully into the matter in a moment; 
here the fact concerns us that both kinds of authority play 
necessary parts in human life. Opinion finds its sphere 
in practical affairs. Children must be guided by their 
seniors, and the uninstructed in general must depend for 
guidance upon those who are instructed. But opinion is 
commonly said to have been banished from science and 
philosophy, and largely so from religion. Into this branch 
of the inquiry we need not go; it suffices to state the 
proper sphere of opinion. The authority that is con- 
cerned with facts we call testimony, and its range is far 
wider than the range of opinion. We constantly accept 
facts at the hands of witnesses, taking pains only to satisfy 
ourselves as to their competency. This is essential to the 
progress of knowledge, and in fact to its existence in any 
comprehensive sense of the term. A material cause of 
the great progress in knowledge made in recent years is 
the wide range that has been assigned to testimony, ac- 
companied by careful scrutiny into the character of wit- 
nesses. It is, therefore, only in a relative sense that 
authority has been discarded, or that it can ever be dis- 
carded, in the field of science. 

L,et us look a little more closely into the relation of 
authority to the knowing processes. In the narrowest 
1 See Quick: Educational Reformers, p. 222, 223. 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 35 

sense, knowledge of things and events is purely a per- 
sonal matter. The fact or idea that another person places 
in my way, as a parent bird puts a worm in the mouth 
of its young, or a boy drops a marble into his pocket, I 
do not know. I know it only when, through the facts 
and ideas that I have acquired for myself, I assimi- 
late it and make it a part of my mental store. And even 
then it lacks something of the reality and vividness of 
primitive knowledge. Still we may agree with Mr. Quick 
in saying that Miss Martineau knew the comet which she 
did not see was in the sky. Not as much can be said of 
thinking. Using familiar speech, A convinces B of the 
truth of a proposition or of the value of a doctrine. In 
what sense does he do so ? The operation is in no way 
like the operation of piling up weights in one scale-pan 
until the other kicks the beam. What A really does is 
to place before B facts and ideas that tend to excite in his 
mind a train of thought that will bring him to the de- 
sired conclusion. The thought is B's, not A's. In the 
real sense, therefore, every man who becomes convinced 
of a truth convinces himself. All that A can do for B is 
skillfully to select and to bring before him matter that 
compels him to do the thinking. This is due to a certain 
relation, spontaneous or artificial, that exists between 
A's mind and B's mind and the matter. The ultimate 
explanation of the process is found in what we famil- 
iarly call the constitution of the human mind. Now 
this element of thought or personal insight is wholly 
wanting when opinion or judgment is taken solely upon 
authority. The operation is mechanical on both sides. 
The practical result may be the same when a person 
is guided by authority that it is when he is guided by 
reason, but the speculative result is very different. 
Two men vote the same ticket at an election, one 



36 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ignorantly, the other intelligently; the one vote counts 
for as much as the other; but there is no comparing the 
mental relations of the two men to the transaction, nor 
to life as a whole, provided the present act is a type of 
their conduct. 

But authority is intimately connected with tradition, 
and I have promised to say something more about that 
subject. 

Facts and ideas at first hand are handed on from one 
man to another ; opinion grows ; thought accumulates; 
conjectures and explanations multiply; habits and usages 
spring up and become established; doctrines take root; 
laws and institutions are evolved ; material civilization 
expands; an educational ideal is worked out — this, or 
something like it, may be accepted as a general account 
of tradition. As here used, tradition is coextensive with 
civilization, comprehending every human achievement that 
continues from generation to generation. The currently 
accepted educational ideal is the type to which society, or 
nien as a whole, consciously and unconsciously, labor to 
make their successors conform. "The educational aim, 
we shall find, is always practical in the large sense of that 
word," says Professor Laurie, "for, even in its highest 
aspects, it has always to do with life in some form 
or other, and indeed presumes a certain philosophy of 
life." This aim or ideal is one of the most potent of 
realities, ranking, perhaps, next to nature itself as an 
educational agent. Through its causative energy, it 
tends to produce the national character. The first of the 
three stages through which Professor Laurie finds the 
educational ideal passing in its historical evolution, is 
' ' the unpremeditated education of national character and 
institutions, and of instinctive ideas of personal and com- 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 37 

munity life in contact with specific external conditions, 
and moulding or being moulded by these. 1 

Words can hardly exaggerate the formative power of 
tradition, taking it in this large way, upon the character 
and conduct of men. It dictates ways of living and habits 
of thought. It prescribes creeds and platforms. It be- 
comes a practical measure of truth and duty. It is the 
cake of custom. It fixes the cycle of Cathay. In the 
large sense of those terms, it is the glass of fashion and 
the mould of form. But it tends to mechanism and 
uniformity. It runs to dryness and deadness. Often it 
becomes oppressive and tyrannous in the extreme, stifling 
originality and repressing fresh thought. Naturally, 
therefore, tradition calls out from the prophets of new 
ideas and causes their most vigorous protests. They de- 
mand to be informed why we also should not ascend to 
the head-springs of thought, feeling, and life. As Mr. 
Emerson voices this demand: 

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. 
It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing 
generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their 
eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the 
universe ? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of 
insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, 
and not the history of theirs ? Embosomed for a season in nature, 
whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us 
by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, 
why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the 
living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? 
The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the 
fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us 
demand our own works and laws and worship. 2 

This is one side of the matter, and a very important 
side. But the other side is at least equally important. 

1 Pre-Christian Education. — Introduction. 

2 Nature. — Introduction . 



38 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Without persistence, men could never get forward. To 
keep strictly within our own field, tradition hands to us 
the existing educational type, and the materials out of 
which, for the most part, the type of the future will be 
fabricated. Some tell us that we should resort to civiliza- 
tion, and some to the nature of the mind, for our ideals; 
but there is good reason to think that the two directions 
are very much the same thing in substance, for certainly 
we may suppose that the civilizations of the most advanced 
nations are psychological. However that may be, man is 
in the midst of tradition, as he is of nature; and he might as 
well try to escape the influence of the one as of the other. 
Still more, the materials of education must be largely 
drawn from the same source. Here we find realities, as 
well as in the natural world, and realities that are quite 
as important. The cry, ' 'Back to nature ! " ' 'Back to ex- 
perience ! " important enough in its place, sometimes 
takes on the color of the ridiculous. The human tradi- 
tion contains elements that have been assorted, tested, 
elaborated, and refined; first-facts and thoughts have 
become second- facts and thoughts: and so on in endless 
repetition. Why then should we always be going back 
to the beginning, if such a thing were possible? The 
demand that one shall do so — that he shall repeat in all 
things the experience of the race — is like saying to a man 
who wants a dinner that he must not sit down at the table 
that is already spread, or even go to the shops for pre- 
pared materials of which a dinner may be made, but that 
he must go to the forest for meat and to the field for 
bread. 

III. school studies. 
The topics that we have been considering are of great 
speculative interest. But this interest is not the main 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 39 

cause of their being discussed in this place. My main 
object is practical, not scientific. I have been seeking a 
point of view from which we may profitably consider the 
selection of educational materials for the school. This is 
the question of educational values in its most practical 
sense, and it calls for thorough discussion at the present 
time in the light of fundamental doctrines. After what 
has been said, we shall not be long in coming to an 
answer. 

First, the logic of life, to a great extent, settles the 
question. In its early stages mental growth is purely 
spontaneous; what the child shall first know is settled 
beforehand as conclusively as what he shall first eat. The 
secondary sources of cultivation cannot be made primary 
sources. The realities of spirit cannot be put before the 
realities of sense. Ratio and proportion are subject to 
change, but the main facts that concern us are fixed and 
immovable. And, considering the tendency of men to 
ride hobbies, to chase ignesfatui, to cultivate fads, this is 
a fortunate circumstance. Happily, the Creator has 
placed some things beyond the reach of experiment! 

Secondly, when the child comes to school he has already 
acquired two precious possessions. One is a certain store 
of facts, ideas, images, and thoughts, and a certain 
emotional and moral development. This mental store has 
originated in ways that have already been explained, and 
that need not be recapitulated. The magnitude of the 
store, and the ratio of the elements, depend in part upon 
the child's bent of mind, but mainly upon his quickness 
of apprehension, his environment, and the tutelage of his 
associates. As a rule, we may assume that his different 
kinds of knowledge are fairly well balanced. The child's 
second possession is a store of language that is measurably 
adequate to express his present facts and ideas, and to 



40 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

receive new ones. Here again we may assume that some- 
thing like balance exists. Knowledge may be in excess 
of expression, expression in excess of knowledge; primary 
and secondary knowledge may not be well proportioned 
in all cases; but, generally speaking, we may suppose that 
the two facts measure each other. The teacher must 
take the child where she finds him, and face the question: 
What shall the course of instruction be ? We may sum 
up the answer in the following terms: — 

1. The child's mental development should continue 
along all the lines on which he has been moving from the 
day of his birth. While the school marks a new step for- 
ward in the child-life, it should not mark a violent 
change. 

2. This mental development should embrace the two 
main factors that have been set forth, knowledge and 
expression. The time will come when language, as a 
means of expression, may fall behind thought, but not 
yet. Hence to enlarge the child's store of knowledge, 
and his means of receiving and conveying knowledge, are 
the two main duties of the primary teacher. Most fortu- 
nately, good teaching on either side will help on the other 
one. The motto should not be, "Words through things, ' ' 
or "Things through words," but "Words through things 
and things through words." But the things taught 
should embrace the realities of the mind as well as the 
realities of nature. At this point it is easy to fall into 
excesses. If the former fault consisted in placing undue 
emphasis upon words and literature, the fact does "not ex- 
tenuate the fault of overlooking the worth of the human- 
ities. 

3. All the sources of knowledge should be drawn upon 
in due measure, primary and secondary, and also the sub- 
groups into which each of these is divided. It is important 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 41 

to remember that secondary knowledge ultimately depends 
upon primitive knowledge, and that it tends to formalism 
unless perpetually renewed. The primary pupil must be 
kept close to the realities of nature, and the advanced 
student often be led back to them. 

Unfortunately, there are those who see great educa- 
tional worth in the spores of plants, the roes of fishes, 
and the exuvicz of insects who can find little worth in 
Plato's ' 'Republic," Aristotle's ''Politics," Milton's, 
poems, and Shakspere's plays. 

4. As a rule the child will not bring with him to school 
the arts of the school. They must, therefore, be taught 
in the school. These are such as reading and writing, 
arithmetical computation, and drawing. They are tools 
with which the invention of man, not nature, furnishes us. 
They are instruments for the acquirement and impartation 
of knowledge. Reading and writing, in an eminent sense, 
are the means by which we acquaint ourselves with the 
best that has been known and said in the world, and so 
with the record of the human spirit. It may be that 
relatively the old school devoted too much time to teaching 
these arts, to the neglect of teaching subject-matter. 
Certain it is that little real knowledge can be taught 
through reading in the first stage, owing to the technical 
difficulties of the subject. But to teach the largest amount 
of knowledge in the shortest time is not the proper ideal. 
If that were the aim, we should not teach the language 
arts at all. The school looks to, the future; and even if 
the child could acquire real knowledge more rapidly during 
his first school years if he neglected the two great arts of 
the school altogether, he finds himself richly repaid in the 
end for his temporary abstinence through the use that he 
makes of these incomparable instruments of education. 
The New school will make a mistake not less serious than 



42 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

the one that it charges upon the Old school, if it relegates 
the language arts to a secondary place, leaving them, as 
it were, to be picked up by the way. 

Viewing its history externally, we see that education 
has undergone numerous changes in respect to ideals, 
subject-matter, and methods. We may limit ourselves to 
the second of these three topics. The Greeks fed the 
minds of their children on their own incomparable litera- 
ture. The Romans, when they had grown out of their 
pristine narrowness, studied the Greek letters. The Real- 
istic Humanists of the Renaissance looked for thought- 
material in the form and substance of the ancient literatures. 
The Verbal Humanists laid the stress on the style and 
form of the same writings. The Natural Realists pleaded 
for nature. In our own times, some educators stand for 
science and some for the record of the spirit. These ques- 
tions, while important, do not in my view touch the real 
root of the matter. We must not blind ourselves to the 
fact that there has been good education since the day that 
men first began to study and to teach. Perhaps good 
teaching has been much more abundant than we are apt 
to think. Too frequently our judgments rest on external 
features. One teacher may instruct orally, another use 
text-books; one may find his materials in nature, another 
in humanity; one may use science as his instrument, an- 
other mathematics or philosophy; but if they are all good 
teachers, they will impart knowledge, energize mind, and 
develop character. We need not take too seriously the 
flux of theory and practice. There is something in edu- 
cation that transcends theory — something that survives 
the flux of method — something that is permanent and 
living. This something is the constant element in educa- 
tion. It is the pupil's own free, intelligent, personal 



HUMAN CULTIVATION. 43 

effort to learn. If this be present, the absence of much 
else may be excused; if this be absent, the presence of all 
else only makes the failure the more conspicuous. What 
we should strive for, is this constant element in the culti- 
vation of the individual. The smooth phrases now cur- 
rent, "normal development," "natural method," "nature 
studies," "new education," and the like, must not make 
us dead to its incalculable importance. Orpheus built his 
Thebes by playing on his flute. Teachers will never build 
theirs in a similar manner. 

The greatest danger that threatens education to-day 
arises from the narrow and imperfect views of many of 
those who are engaged in educational work. How diffi- 
cult it is for the specialist to keep his mind broad, free, and 
sympathetic, experience has fully shown. Teachers also 
are likely to be greatly influenced by their own scholastic 
tastes and interests. The trouble is that the specialist or 
the teacher is apt to take a part of the map of the mind, 
or of knowledge, for the whole map. This state of things 
is partly unavoidable. It has also its good side, for it 
tends to the generation of enthusiasm. But the laying 
out of courses of study and the supervision of schools 
should fall into other hands. Only those are fit for this 
responsible work who have caught a vision of the whole 
world of mind and of knowledge, and who have some just 
conception, not merely of parts, but also of the relations 
of the parts that blend in the one grand unity. The 
Greeks believed in balance or ratio. Proportion was a 
great word with them. "Nothing in excess," were the 
words of Solon. It is a lesson that many educators and 
teachers much need to learn. 




II. 

THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 1 

ROFESSOR REIN, of Jena, remarks in his 
' ' Outlines of Pedagogics ' ' that the ' ' fiction 
of a formal education must be given up. In 
general," he says, " there is no such educa- 
tion at all; there exist simply as many kinds 
of formal education as there are essentially different 
spheres of intellectual employment." Dr. Van Iyiew, 
Rein's translator and editor, explains ' 'formal education, ' ' 
or ' ' formal culture, ' ' as signifying ' ' about the same as 
the vague expression ' discipline of the mind. ' Its ex- 
treme defenders, " he continues, " claim that the pursuit 
of classic studies renders the intellect capable in any 
sphere whatever; i.e., it develops all the mental facul- 
ties. It is true that the study of a language renders the 
pursuit of other related branches easier; but it cannot be 
conceded that it prepares the mind directly for grasping 
other totally irrelevant subjects." 2 

On the other hand, the Committee of Ten, in its 
( ' Report on Secondary School Studies, ' ' assumes the cor- 
rectness of the doctrine. The passages in which this 
assumption is made are so well known that it will suffice to 
quote a single one of them. ' ' Every youth who entered 
college' ' [on the plan suggested] ' l would have spent four 
years in studying a few subjects thoroughly; and, on the 

1 A paper read to the National Council of Education, Asbury 
Park, N. J., July, 1894. 

2 Translated by C. C. and Ida J. Van Liew, p. 42. 

44 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 45 

theory that all the subjects are to be considered equivalent 
in educational rank for the purposes of admission to college, 
it would make no difference which subjects he had chosen 
from the programme — he would have had four 3 r ears of 
strong and effective mental training. ' ' 1 The Chairman of 
the Committee, it may be observed, had previously de- 
clared, speaking of the development of observation, that 
"it does not matter what subject the child studies, so 
that he study something thoroughly in an observational 
method. If the method be right, it does not matter, 
among the numerous subjects well fitted to develop this 
important faculty, which he choose, or which be chosen 
for him." 2 

The views expressed by the Committee of Ten have not 
passed without protest. One member of the Committee, 
President Baker, uttered his dissent at the time. 3 Dr. 
Schurman has since spoken of the Committee as falling 
victims to that popular psychology which defines education 
merely as the training of mental faculties, as though the 
materials of instruction were a matter of indifference. 
Education, he insists, is not merely a training of mental 
powers; it is a process of nutrition; mind grows by what it 
feeds on, and the mental organism, like the physical organ- 
ism, must have suitable and appropriate nourishment. 4 

Dr. De Garmo has remarked that the sentence quoted 
above implies that the formal discipline we have heretofore 
ascribed to classics and mathematics may really be obtained 
in the study of anything, and that consequently it makes 
no difference what we study. This, he says, is seeking 
to correct an erroneous theory by making it universal. 5 

1 Government Printing Office, p. 53. 

2 The Forum, December, 1892, p. 418. 

3 See his Supplemental Report. 

4 School Review, February, 1894, p. 93. 

5 Educational Review. March 1894, p. 278. 



46 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The words that have been quoted from the several 
authorities reveal a wide divergence of view. It may be 
true, as one of the critics of the Committee of Ten 
observes, that no harm will follow from its theory so long 
as the rich programmes that it offers remain; still, the 
question is absolutely fundamental to the science of educa- 
tional values and cannot be waved aside. If one subject 
is as good as another for the purposes of discipline, then 
the maxim ' ' all is in all ' ' must be taken in a sense that 
would have startled even Jacotot. Certainly such a theory, 
supported by the weight of authority that is behind it, 
may well claim the attention of any society or association 
of men whose raison d'itre is the discussion of educa- 
tional problems. 

In the outset I may state the theory a little more 
definitely. Dr. De Garmo says it consists in ' ' the idea 
that the mind can store up mechanical force in a few sub- 
jects, like grammar and mathematics, which can be used 
with efficiency in any department of life." That is, the 
process that formal discipline assumes may be likened to 
the passage of energy from the fires of the sun, first to 
vegetation, and then to the coal beds and subterranean 
reservoirs of oil and gas, whence it is again drawn forth to 
cook a breakfast, to warm a drawing-room, to light a city, 
or to propel a steamship across the ocean. This is the 
theory that we are to examine. 

First, we may look into the analogous facts in the physi- 
ological sphere. — The result of physical activity — call it 
what we will — presents to our view two phases, one 
special and one general. The force engendered by any 
defined exertion of physical power is fully available for 
all like kinds of exercise, but only partially so for un- 
like kinds- Thus, the power or skill engendered by 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 47 

driving nails can all be used in driving nails, but only 
partially in shoving a plane. In the intellectual sphere, 
the two corresponding facts are sometimes called train- 
ing and discipline. Furthermore, the generic element 
may be still further analyzed. Activity tends, first, to 
invigorate the whole body — " to tone it up," as we say — 
and, secondly, to overflow into new channels lying near 
to the one in which it was created. For example, driv- 
ing nails will energize the whole body to a degree, but 
the hand, the arm, and the shoulder to a much greater 
degree; and so it will prepare for shoving a plane or 
turning an auger far more than for kicking a ball 01 
vaulting over a bar. The law appears to be this: in so far 
as the second exertion involves the same muscles and nerves 
as the first one, and, particularly, in so far as it calls for 
the same coordination of muscles and nerves, the power 
created by the first exertion will be available. In other 
words, the result is determined by the congruity or the 
incongruity of the two efforts. 

Now, the contribution that any defined exertion makes 
to the general store of one's bodily energy is important. 
At the same time, the facts do not prove that a reservoir 
of power can be accumulated by any one kind of effort 
that can be used indifferently for any and all purposes. 
There is no such thing as a formal physical discipline. 
Energy created by activity flowing in one channel cannot 
be turned at will into any other channel. A boxer is not 
perforce a fencer. A pugilist in training does not train 
promiscuously, but according to certain strict methods 
that experience has approved. Mr. Galton has undertaken 
to show that the genius of the famous wrestlers of the 
North Country is hereditary; but he has not undertaken 
to show that these wrestlers are also famous oarsmen. 1 

1 Hereditary Genius, Chap, xviii. 



48 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Secondly, we may touch for a moment on the relations 
of body and mind. — That such a relation exists — that 
psychic life has a physical basis; that the saints all have 
bodies — is admitted; but the nicer connections of body 
and soul have never been reduced to formulae. The 
prudent L,ocke's maxim, Mens sana in sano corpore, is 
universally admired; it expresses, no doubt, a truth more 
or less general, and is a beautiful educational ideal. Still, 
we cannot deny soundness to many minds that have 
dwelt in unsound bodies, or claim mental soundness for all 
men having sound bodies. Many of the saints have lived 
in poor bodies, while many persons with good bodies have 
been far from being saints. Not even the wildest mate- 
rialist, although he should hold that the brain secretes 
thought as the liver secretes bile, would pretend that 
physical activity and strength and psychic activity and 
strength can be put in an equation. 

Thirdly, dismissing these analogous facts, we come 
directly to the mi?id itself. — We shall examine into the 
mutual convertibility of the different kinds of mental 
activity or power. 

There is a constant relation between the three phases 
of mental action. Cognition, feeling, and will are not 
names of different states of consciousnesss, but names of 
different aspects of the same consciousness. They can- 
not be separated except in thought. The three elements 
mingle in the full stream of mental activity from the mo- 
ment that the stream begins to flow. The annihilation 
of one is the annihilation of all. 

Within certain limits, these elements seem to vary to- 
gether; outside of those limits, they tend to inverse varia- 
tion. Mr. Darwin has told us with charming frankness, 
and in words bordering on pathos, that his own exclusive 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 49 

absorption in scientific study had destroyed the feelings 
of wonder, admiration, and devotion which lie at the root 
of religious experience, and also robbed him of the pleas- 
ures which he had once received from poetry and art. L,ate 
in life he wrote that the most sublime scenes had become 
powerless to cause the conviction and feeling to arise in 
his mind that there is more in a human being than the 
mere breath of his body, which had filled and elevated 
it when, a young man, he stood in the grandeur of a Bra- 
zilian forest. 1 He speaks of his mind as having become 
" a kind of machine for grinding general laws out of large 
collections of facts, ' ' and says he cannot conceive ' ■ why 
this should have caused the atrophy of that part of the 
brain alone on which the higher tastes depend. ' ' 3 Shaks- 
pere perfectly understood, what modern psychology ex- 
plains, that the native hue of resolution becomes "sicklied 
o'er with the pale cast of thought, ' ' and that enterprises of 
great pith and moment are thereby turned awry and lose 
the name of action. Hamlet had thought too much to 
kill the king; and many a man of the closet — many a 
speculative thinker — has undergone a like disintegration 
of practical character, although he may have had no pur- 
pose to commit a similar deed. It is therefore perfectly 
obvious that there is no such thing as formal mental dis- 
cipline, in the broadest sense of the language. 

Narrowing the field again, we come to the i?itellect. Now 
our question is the mutual convertibility of the different 
forms of intellectual activity, and we must proceed more 
slowly. 

1. These forms are much more closely connected than 
the old psychologists thought. They indeed taught that 

1 Life and Letters, Vol. I p. 281. 

2 Ibid., Vol. I, p. 81. 



5<D STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

representative knowledge is conditioned upon presenta- 
tive, and that thought is conditioned upon both presenta- 
tion and representation; but they did not teach how deeply 
the processes summed up in the word ' 'thought' ' enter 
into perception. There is perhaps no form of cognitive 
activity that is pure and simple. These propositions do 
not need to be argued. At the same time, the cognitive 
elements do not vary together. Perception, memory, and 
imagination are not convertible terms; neither is any one 
of these faculties, in a concrete case, the measure of any 
other. We find the strangest combinations of intellect- 
ual power in real life. The savage is as weak in speculative 
reflection as he is strong in keenness of scent. The Realists 
have deservedly emphasized the value of sense-perception 
and of sense-teaching in education; but they have not 
emphasized the facts that the particular and the concrete 
mark an early and imperfect stage of mental advancement, 
that there is no greater clog upon mental progress than 
the habit of thinging it, and that a man's thinking capa- 
city is gauged by his power to think general and abstract 
thoughts. Children and savages — all immature minds — 
live in their senses; cultivated men grow out of them. 
That is a significant anecdote which Dr. Fitch relates of 
the teacher who was testifying before Lord Taunton's 
Commission as to the extraordinary interest which his 
pupils took in physical science. Asked what department 
of science most interested his scholars, he replied: "The 
chemistry of the explosive substances." 1 

2. "Habits of observation" and "men of observation" 
are phrases often heard. We may well inquire how far 
such language is true. 

It is well known that some persons keenly notice faces, 
some actions, some attire, some manners, some language; 

1 Lectures on Teaching, Chapt. XIV. 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 51 

also that some persons are closely observant of several 
classes of phenomena. There is, however, no formal power 
of observation. The Indian's boasted faculty is limited to 
his native environment; introduced into Cheapside or the 
Strand, he sees nothing compared with Sam Weller or 
one of Fagin's pupils. Nor can any exercises be pre- 
scribed that will cultivate an all-around observation. The 
inductive logicians lay down rules for conducting observa- 
tions and experiments; as, That they must be precise, 
That the phenomena must be isolated, etc. ; and very good 
rules they are. But they do not constitute a proper 
org anon of observation. The words of Dr. Sully remain 
true, that there are no rules of good observation which 
would enable one to teach it as an art. More will depend, 
he says, upon daily companionship with an acute observer 
than upon systematic training. 1 Still, in such case the 
senses of the pupil will generally take the direction of the 
senses of the acute observer. 

3. Next come the faculties of representation. Unusual 
powers of memory are so far from implying unusual under- 
standing that, according to a prevalent opinion, the two 
are irreconcilable. Some writers have thought it neces- 
sary to refute that view. We need not canvass the ques- 
tion here further than to remark that good understanding 
is more frequently accompanied by good memory than good 
memory by good understanding. Still further, memory 
exercises are quite as limited in their effects as observation 
exercises. One person has a memory for names, a second 
for places, a third for faces, a fourth for dates and statis- 
tics, a fifth for ideas, a sixth for language, etc.; some 
combine two or more of these gifts; but there is no 
memory that takes up everything indifferently. 

What has been said of the memory is equally true of 

1 Outlines of Psychology, p 214. 



52 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

the other great representative faculty. There is the 
imagination of the philosopher, of the artist, and of the 
man of affairs, with their several subdivisions. 

4. Finally, we come to the logical faculty, which is 
supposed to be the very seat and shrine of formal disci- 
pline. Here the facts are not different from those already 
presented. Ability in formal logic is not the same thing 
as ability in real logic, as the Schoolmen made very 
plain. Deduction is not induction. Mastery of the 
method of difference, sometimes called the chemical 
method, does not equip one for investigating the affairs 
of human society. On the other hand, it is often said, 
and with perfect truth, that constant use of the more 
rigorous methods of science tends to unfit men for deal- 
ing with human questions. No curious observer can fail 
to notice how practical ability to judge and to reason tends 
to run in special channels. The tendency is most striking 
in specialization. Eminence in microscopy, in sanitary 
science, in engineering, in philology, in pedagogy, in a 
thousand specialized pursuits, is no guarantee of ability 
in other matters, or even of good sense in the common 
affairs of life. The only astrologist whom I have ever 
happened to know personally was an eminent civil engineer. 

Every person who has attempted to make up a course 
of popular lectures by drawing upon the professional 
talent of the vicinage, knows how hard it is to draw the 
professional man out of his Fach. Often the lawyer's 
unwillingness to appear in such a capacity is due to his 
consciousness of his own limitations. Again, the notion 
that the lawyer is especially fitted for the work of legisla- 
tion by his technical knowledge of the law, is a common 
fallacy. His mind is trained in the law as it is; and he 
naturally shrinks from changes that will necessitate new 
adjustments of his ideas and modifications of his practice. 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 53 

After remarking that it is hard for the modern reader to 
comprehend how men who reasoned upon their data with 
the force and subtlety of the Schoolmen could ever have 
accepted such data, Lord Macaulay proceeds as follows: 

It is the same with some eminent lawyers. Their legal argu- 
ments are intellectual prodigies, abounding with the happiest 
analogies and most refined distinctions. The principles of their 
arbitrary science being once admitted, the statute-book and the 
reports being once assumed as the foundations of reasoning, these 
men must be allowed to be perfect masters of logic. But if a 
question arises as to the postulates on which their whole system 
rests, if they are called upon to vindicate the fundamental maxims 
of that system which they have passed their lives in stud}- ing, 
these very men often talk the language of savages or of children. 
Those who have listened to a man of this class in his own court, 
and who have witnessed the skill with which he analyzes and 
digests a vast mass of evidence, or reconciles a crowd of prece- 
dents which at first sight seem contradictory, scarcely know him 
again when, a few hours later, they hear him speaking on the 
other side of Westminster Hall in his capacity of legislator. They 
can scarcely believe that the paltry quirks which are faintly heard 
through a storm of coughing, and which do not impose on the 
plainest country gentleman, can proceed from the same sharp and 
vigorous intellect which had excited their admiration under the 
same roof and on the same day. 1 

It is well known that Lord Erskine, the peerless advo- 
cate at the bar, proved a disappointment in the House of 
Commons. 

Thus, we see that, no matter what mental activ- 
ities we consider, they conform to the causes that excite 
them. Like the dyer's hand, the mental faculties are 
subdued to what they work in. There is no such thing 
as activity in vacuo. An incisive writer has said: 

The circumstantial evidence with which lawyers, qua lawyers, 
are familiar under our system of jurisprudence, is an artificial 
thing created by legislation or custom, with the object of prevent- 

1 BosweWs Life of Johnson. 



54 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ing the minds of the jury — presumably a body of untrained and 
unlearned men — from being confused or led astray. Moreover, 
they are only familiar with its use in one very narrow field — 
human conduct under one set of social conditions. For example, 
a lawyer might be a very good judge of circumstantial evidence 
in America, and a very poor one in India or China; might have a 
keen eye for the probable or improbable in a New England vil- 
lage, and none at all in a Prussian barrack. ... A wild 
Indian will, owing to prolonged observation and great acuteness 
of the senses, tell by a simple inspection of grass or leaf-covered 
ground, on which a scholar will perceive nothing unusual what- 
ever, that a man has recently passed over it. He will tell whether 
he was walking or running, whether he carried a burden, whether 
he was young or old, and how long ago and at what hour of the 
day he went by. He reaches all his conclusions by circumstantial 
evidence of precisely the same character as that used by the geol- 
ogist, though he knows nothing about formal logic or the process 

of induction. Now, what Dr. would have us believe is, 

that he can come out of his study and pass judgment on the 
Indian's reasoning without being able to see one of the "known 
facts" on which the reasoning rests, or appreciate in the slightest 
degree which of them is material to the conclusion and which is 
not, or even to conjecture whether taken together they exclude 
the hypothesis that it was not a man but a cow or a dog which 
passed over the ground, and not to-day but yesterday that the 
marks were made. *■ 

Perhaps it will be objected to the line of argument fol- 
lowed that it assumes the truth of an obsolete psychology. 
The change of front of psychologists at this point, Hoff- 
ding thus suggests: 

As classification, in the provinces of zoology and botany, led to 
the notion of eternal and unchangeable species— so that it now 
costs a hard struggle to furnish proof that these species are the 
fruits of a natural course of evolution — so psychological research 
for a long time thought its end had been attained when it reduced 
the various inner phenomena to various "faculties'' of the mind — a 
procedure which conflicted strangely with the strictly spiritualistic 
conception of the unity of the mind. At the same time, these 

i The Nation, November 16, 1876, pp. 296-297, 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 55 

"faculties" were regarded as causes of the phenomena concerned, 
and thus the need of a causal explanation was satisfied in a very- 
convenient, though quite illusory, manner. In particular it was 
overlooked that in classification attention is given only to a prom- 
inent characteristic; that it is not therefore actual concrete states 
themselves which are classified, but the elements out of which a 
closer examination shows them to be formed. There is scarcely a 
single conscious state — as will be shown later in detail — which is 
only idea, only feeling, or only will. x 

I am not about to attempt the rehabilitation of the 
much derided ' 'faculty' ' psychology. It cannot be denied, 
however, that, with all its defects, this psychology did 
furnish a convenient mode of describing mental phenom- 
ena. But, no matter what psychology we adopt, the 
phenomena of the individual mind cannot be explained, 
so far as appears, on the theory of the correlation of 
forces. 

Next in order come some remarks and applications of 
the principles stated. 

1. What has been said of physical activities may be 
repeated of psychic activities. They present to our 
minds a specific and a generic phase. Any defined intel- 
lectual exertion, besides generating power that is subject 
to draft for like efforts, also tends to energize the intellect 
and, to a degree, the whole mind. This overflow of 
power — this mobilization of the mind, if we may so call it 
— is an important factor in psychic life. It furnishes the 
dogma of formal discipline its only support. How strong 
this support is, we cannot say in quantitative terms; but 
certainly it is far from sufficient to uphold the dogma as 
commonly understood. 

2. The last remark suggests the harmonizable quality 

1 Outlines of Psychology. Translated by Mary E. Lowndes, 
p. 19. 



56 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

— the congruity or incongruity — of mental activities. This 
subject belongs to the psychologist; but a related one, 
which has even more practical importance, belongs to the 
pedagogist. Reference is now made to congruity as a 
principle to be employed in the classification of studies. 
The first question is: What studies are congruous and 
what incongruous? And the second one: How far should 
the principle of congruity be followed in the choice of 
studies and in their arrangement ? The two subjects of 
congruous mental activity and of congruous studies call 
for a fuller investigation than they have ever received. 

3. Even this cursory survey would be inadequate with- 
out mention being made of two topics that receive large 
attention at the hands of teachers and educational writers. 
Certain arts were long ago called liberal partes liberates) 
because they were supposed to liberalize the mind; that 
is, set it free from its ignorance, narrowness, and preju- 
dice. This claim was well founded. In time, however, 
a liberal education came to be understood as a general 
education, in contradistinction to one that is special. The 
phrase now conveyed the idea of extent rather than qual- 
ity of study, and such appears to be its present accepta- 
tion. But it is almost needless to remark that liberal 
study, and particularly as pursued in colleges and univer- 
sities, is possible only in a relative sense. There must be 
a definite limitation of the field if we are to secure thor- 
oughness and efficiency. Men cannot now take all 
knowledge for their province. But this is not all. Good 
specialization must also attain a certain breadth. A Greek 
scholar must study Latin; an English scholar, German; a 
physicist, mathematics; a pedagogist, psychology, logic, 
and ethics. Over-specialization, like too wide general 
study, defeats itself. The adjusting of the two factors, 
extension and intention, is a problem as difficult as it is 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 57 

important. At one stage they vary directly; at another 
stage, inversely. Liberal culture is but a broader special- 
ization; specialization, but a narrower liberal culture. 

4. The only practical reason for discussing formal dis- 
cipline in this place is that it involves studies and courses 
of study. The first question relative to the educational 
value of any subject is: What kind of mental activity 
does it stimulate ? This question reaches much further 
than is commonly supposed. If the subject is said to 
develop the faculties of observation, then we must ask: 
Observation in what direction ? In the direction of nature, 
or of man ? And, if the answer is nature, then the ques- 
tion is: What department of nature ? The same analysis 
must be made in respect to memory, imagination, com- 
parison, judgment, and thought. But this is not all. 
Because a subject develops the kind of activity that is 
desired, we are not therefore at once to assign it a place 
in the curriculum. The quantitative question is hardly less 
important, viz.: How much activity does the subject 
stimulate? Even the most worthless subjects have some 
educational value; and we cannot assign any subject its 
place until we have compared it with others in respect to 
the measure of the effect that it produces. 

5. Applying these criteria to leading studies, we have 
no difficulty in seeing that their ardent cultivators often 
claim too much for them. The partisans of scientific edu- 
cation claim that the sciences stimulate strongly all the 
intellectual faculties. We must, admit the claim. This, 
however, does not cut us off from asking what channels 
the observation and comparison, analysis and thinking, run 
in. Mr. Todhunter repels the claim that the natural 
sciences ' ' are eminently and specially salutary as a means 
of developing the powers of observation." He argues 
that ' ' the study of any subject tends to make men observ- 



58 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ant of the special matter of that subject; the study of 
botany doubtless trains the habit of observing botanical 
phenomena; the study of chemistry doubtless trains the 
habit of observing chemical phenomena. But I have never 
noticed, ' ' he says, ' 'that the devotion to any specific branch 
of natural history or natural philosophy has any potent 
influence in rendering the student specially alive 
to phenomena unconnected with the specific pursuit. 
I could give some striking examples to the con- 
trary. ' ' * Unfortunately, Mr. Todhunter did not gen- 
eralize the principle that underlies his very just re- 
marks. It is the principle of specific and generic prod- 
ucts of mental activity. It is the principle to which Rein 
goes counter when he says in words that are somewhat 
over-strong: ' ' There exist simply as many kinds of formal 
education as there are essentially different spheres of in- 
tellectual employment." But, still more unfortunately, 
Mr. Todhunter prefers claims for mathematics that are 
quite as absurd as those that he repels in the case of 
natural science. In their own field the mathematical 
sciences are invaluable, both as disciplines and as tools; 
but no field is more closely limited or more definitely 
marked off. 

All-in all, language is the greatest educational agent 
that we possess. First, it is the content or substance of 
thought. It holds much of the accumulated cultivation of 
our race. Secondly, we master it as a tool for the ex- 
pression of our own thought, and this is inferior to no 
other discipline that we are capable of receiving. Thirdly, 
when we become scholars we study language as the form 
of thought, or as grammar; and here we deal with some 
of the broadest and most abstract relations that ever re- 
ceive our attention. language appeals to us also under 

1 The Conflict of Studies, p. 23, 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 59 

its historical aspect, under its comparative aspect, and, 
finally, as one of the noblest, if not indeed the noblest, of 
all the arts. But great as is its educational value, you 
cannot adequately educate a child merely by teaching him 
language. 

This is an outline merely of the subject of this paper. 
I shall now sum up the principal ideas that have been 
advanced in the course of the argument. 

The power generated by any kind of mental activity must 
be studied under two aspects, one special and one general. 

The degree to which such power is general depends upon 
the extent to which it energizes the mind, and particu- 
larly the extent to which it overflows into congruent 
channels. 

Such power is far more special than general; it is only 
in a limited sense that we can be said to have a store of 
mobilized mental power. In a sense, men have percep- 
tions, memories, and imaginations rather than perception, 
memory, and imagination. 

While liberal study and specialization look to somewhat 
different ends, they are, in fact, only parts, and necessary 
parts, of the same thing. 

No one kind of mental exercise — no few kinds — can de- 
velop the whole mind. That end can be gained only 
through many and varied activities. 

No study - no single group of studies — contains within 
itself the possibilities *of a whole education. That balance 
of development which we should call a liberal education 
can be gained only through a measurably expanded cur- 
riculum. 

A few words in relation to the genesis and permanency 
of the doctrine of formal discipline will fitly close the 



60 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

paper. That doctrine is a survival from the days of 
Scholasticism. Those days were the halcyon period of 
formal studies. Formalism, which rests upon the machine 
tendency of the human mind, then gained a hold which four 
centuries of real studies have not sufficed to throw off. In 
truth, the downfall of Scholasticism was due primarily to an 
agent that, in one way, perpetuated its power. Humanism 
brought such intense relief to the minds of men, long 
starved upon merely logical elements, that it became the 
badge of a new servitude. The Greek and L,atin liter- 
atures took possession of cultivated minds. The classical 
tradition was established, and it soon became the most 
powerful educational tradition that the. world has ever 
seen. As the classical cultures were not vernacular cul- 
tures, the schools were necessarily made engines for 
teaching foreign languages. Admire as we justly may 
the classical chapter in the history of human cultivation, 
we cannot deny that there grew up a classical formalism 
which was only less tyrannous than the old scholastic 
formalism had been. When the new regime came to be 
challenged, its devotees cast about them for means of de- 
fense. Unconsciously borrowing from the scholastics the 
formal idea, they poured into it the notion that the classics 
have an exclusive, or an almost exclusive, educational 
value; because, as alleged, they alone furnish that liberal 
or general culture which, relatively speaking, must form 
the basis of complete education. Knowledge, content, 
substance, mental nutriment, were relegated to a sec- 
ondary place. It became the business of teachers to ' 'dis- 
cipline" minds; which, indeed, is true enough if the 
matter is rightly understood. This tendency went so far 
that knowledge, thought, ideas, had little to do with 
fixing a man's place in the intellectual world. The 
supreme question was whether he had read certain books, 



THE DOGMA OF FORMAL DISCIPLINE. 6l 

and not whether he was a man of real cultivation. This 
exaggerated claim has at last been cast off. Greek and 
Latin have been relegated to their own proper place as 
educational powers; but, most unfortunately, the con- 
ception of formal discipline, which was the joint product 
of the scholastic and the humanistic minds, still remains 
somewhat to vex our peace. 




III. 

THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE 

AND ENERGY APPLIED TO SOME 

PEDAGOGICAL PROBLEMS. 1 

HE nouns ' f congruence ' ' and ' \ congruity , ' ' 
and the adjectives "congruent" and "con- 
gruous," are derived from the Latin verb 
congruere, which means to come together with 
something, and so to agree. The nouns mean suitableness, 
appropriateness, consistency, agreement, coincidence, cor- 
respondence, fitness, harmony, and the adjectives mean 
pertaining to or having this quality. The words have 
respect to relations, and they are favorites with those 
philosophers who place virtue in the fitness of things. 
For men to render obedience to God, or for a son to honor 
his father, is said to be congruous to the light of reason. 
' ' Incongruence ' ' and ' ' incongruous ' ' are the negatives 
of these words. Congruence may be affirmed of physical 
things alone, of psychic things alone, or of physical 
and psychic things taken together. The element of time 
is involved. Congruence is simultaneous or successive. 
If successive activities are congruous, the first flows 
naturally into the second and they blend; the first leaves 
the body or the mind, a»s the case may be, in a suitable 
frame to enter upon the second. Particular attention may 

1 The Report of the committee on Pedagogics, submitted to the 
National Council of Education at Denver, Col., July, 1895. The 
report has been somewhat expanded in preparing it for this vol- 
ume. It will be seen that, in some degree, this paper and the pre- 
ceding one overlap. 

62 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 63 

be directed to this point, because the argument of this 
paper will turn in large part upon the relations of succes- 
sive psychic states. 

First, we may glance at bodily activities as congruous or 
incongruous. — It is obvious that congruence must be af- 
firmed of some physical activities, incongruence of others. 
No reference is here m^de to organic functions. Walking 
is a good preparation for leaping, wielding a hammer for 
shoving a plane. But violent exercise disqualifies the 
muscles or nerves for any activity that requires careful 
handling or delicate touch. The surgeon could not qualify 
himself for a difficult operation by first engaging in the vig- 
orous exercises of the gymnasium, nor the painter fit him- 
self for putting the last touches to a fine picture by crushing 
stones with a sledge. No more does the skillful teacher 
place the writing or the drawing lesson just after the school 
recess. We need not dwell upon the laws that underlie 
these facts further than to say, that congruent exercises 
appear to involve, in whole or in part, similar coordinations 
of the muscles and nerves and similar physical tones. 

Secondly, we may speak of bodily and psychic states 
as congruous or inco7igruous. — That certain correlations 
exist between the body and the mind is too plain to 
be disputed; also certain oppositions or antagonisms. 
Mental power and tone depend upon physical power and 
tone, while states of mind influence states of body. Re- 
pose of b®dy conduces to reflection, meditation, or musing. 
Strong physical exercise tends to exclude vigorous men- 
tal exercise. Still there are obvious limits to these effects. 
The Greeks laid stress upon maintaining balance or pro- 
portion, between the body and the soul, but their great 
athletes and their great writers or orators were different 



64 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

classes of persons. Aristotle has left two striking testi- 
monies relative to this subject: "The evil of excessive 
training in early years is strikingly proved by the exam- 
ple of the Olympic victors; for not more than two or three 
of them have gained a prize both as boys and as men; 
their early training and severe gymnastic exercises 
exhausted their constitutions. " ' ' Men ought not to labor 
at the same time with their minds and with their bodies; 
for the two kinds of labor are opposed to one another, the 
labor of the body impedes the mind, and the labor of the 
mind the body. ' ' x This is largely true, and the truth has 
important pedagogical applications, as to the question 
whether students as a class can carry on successfully the 
work of the classroom or the laboratory and of the shop 
or field at the same time. 

Thirdly, the primary psychic elements as congruous or 
incongruous. — Cognition, feeling, and will are present in 
every fully developed state of consciousness. Dr. Dewey 
calls them ■ * the three aspects which every consciousness 
presents, according to the light in which it is considered; 
whether as giving information, as affecting the self in a 
painful or pleasurable way, or as manifesting an activity 
of self. But there is still another connection. Just as in 
the organic body the process of digestion cannot go on 
without that of circulation, and both require respiration 
and nerve action, which in turn are dependent upon the 
other processes, so in the organic mind. Knowledge is 
not possible without feeling and will; and neither of these 
without the other two. ' ' 2 This is very well as far as it 
goes, but it does not tell us whether the three elements are 
all present in the first or simplest state of consciousness. 

1 The Politics, VIII : 4; translated by Jowett. 

2 Psychology, pp. 17-18. 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 65 

The further relations of the three elements are of the 
greatest interest, and must be considered more carefully. 
Two facts are easily observable. One is that up to a cer- 
tain point the three elements vary directly; the other is 
that beyond this point they vary inversely. Until the 
mental current reaches a given height, cognition, feeling, 
and will swell together; that point reached, any one of 
the three must swell at the cost of one or both the others. 
Hoffding, who does not, however, generalize them into a 
single law, presents these interesting facts: — 

Self- observation reveals at most only an approximation to a 
state in which all cognitive elements have vanished. Such an 
approximation is reached, the more the strength of the feeling-ele- 
ment increases. Cognition and feeling must thus stand in inverse 
relation to one another; the more strongly the one is manifested, 
the less the strength at the command of the other. An over- 
whelming joy or sorrow may drive out all ideation, all recollec- 
tion; but an ecstatic condition of this kind stands on the margin 
of consciousness. . . . 

It is only in the course of psychological development that dif- 
ferentiation between feeling and will makes its appearance. 
There conies to be an even greater contrast between the two ways 
in which inner movement finds a vent. The psychological impor- 
tance of the law of persistence of energy is here seen plainly, for 
the more energy an individual expends on the one kind of reaction, 
the less can be expended on the other. This truth is strikingly 
illustrated in Saxo's well known tale of the different effect which 
the news of the murder of Regner Lodbrog produced on his sons: 
he in whom the emotion was weakest has the greatest energy for 
action. 1 

This subject is one to which Dr. Sully does the fullest 
justice. Dealing with the opposition between knowing, 
feeling, and willing, he says: 

These three kinds of mental state are, as we have seen, in gen- 
eral clearly marked off from one another. A child in a state of 

1 Outlines of Psychology. Translated by Mary E. Lowndes, 
pp. 98-99. 



66 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

strong emotional excitement contrasts with a child calmly think- 
ing about something, or another child exerting his active powers 
in doing something. If we take any one of these aspects of mind 
in a well-marked form, we see that it is opposed to the other 
aspects. Thus strong feeling is opposed to and precludes at the 
time calm thinking (recollecting, reasoning), as well as regulated 
action (will). Similarly, the intellectual state of remembering or 
reasoning is opposed to feeling and to doing. The mind cannot 
exhibit each kind of phenomenon in a marked degree at the same 
time. 

This opposition may be seen in another way. If we compare 
not different states of the same mind, but different minds as a 
whole, we often find now one kind of one mental state or opera- 
tion, now another in the ascendant. Minds marked by much feel- 
ing (sensitive, emotional natures) commonly manifest less of the 
intellectual and volitional aspects or properties. Similarly, minds 
of a high degree of intellectual capability (inquiring or inquisitive 
minds), or of much active endowment (active minds), are as a 
rule relatively weak in the other kinds of endowment. * 

Again, after observing that the relation of the emotional 
to the intellectual side of mental growth is at once a rela- 
tion of mutual opposition and of reciprocal aid, Dr. Sully 
goes on to say: 

In the first place, feeling and knowing are in a manner op- 
posed. The mind cannot at the same moment be in a state of 
intense emotional excitement and of close intellectual application. 
All violent feeling takes possession of the mind, masters the 
attention, and precludes the due carrying out of the intellectual 
processes. Nice intellectual work, such as discovering unob- 
trusive differences or similarities among objects, or following out 
an intricate chain of reasoning, is impossible except in a compara- 
tively calm state of mind. Ejven when there is no strong emo- 
tional agitation present, intellectual processes may be interfered 
with by the subtile influence of the feelings on the thoughts work- 
ing in the shape of bias. Thus a child that finds a task distasteful 
is apt to reject the idea that the study is useful. His feeling of 
dislike prejudices his mind and blinds him to considerations 
which he would otherwise. recognize. Hence the special difficul- 

1 Outlines of Psychology, pp. 21-22. 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 6j 

ties which, as every teacher knows, are connected with the intel- 
lectual training of children of a highly emotional temperament. 

On the other hand, as we saw above, all intellectual activity, 
since it implies interest, depends on the presence of a certain 
moderate degree of feeling. It may be said, indeed, that all 
good and effective intellectual work involves the presence of a 
gentle wave of pleasurable emotion. Attention is more lively, 
images recur more abundantly, and thought traces out its relations 
more quickly when there is an under-current of pleasure. Hence 
rapid intellectual progress is furthered by lively intellectual 
feelings 

We thus see how the cultivation of intellect and of emotion in- 
volve one another in a measure. In order to exercise the intel- 
lectual powers to the utmost, we must aim at making study 
pleasurable. And if we wish to strengthen the higher emotions, 
such as the moral sentiment and the love of truth, we must seek 
to exercise the intellectual powers. 1 

And finally, in discussing the relation of willing to 
knowing and feeling, he notes again an opposition and a 
connection : 

The outgoings of the mind in action, involving the excitation or 
' ' innervation ' ' of the motor nerves and muscles, are incompatible 
with the comparatively passive state of observing something or 
thinking about something, with its physical accompaniment of 
bodily stillness. The man of energetic action is popularly con- 
trasted with the man of reflection. Similarly, strong emotional 
excitement and action are incompatible, and the man of strong 
will is one who among other things brings emotion under con- 
trol. 

At the same time, voluntary action always includes an element 
of knowing and feeling. The motive to voluntary action, the end 
or thing desired, is the gratification of some feeling, e. g., ambi- 
tion, or the love of applause. And we cannot act for a purpose 
without knowing something about the relation between the action 
we are performing and the result we are aiming at. Thus it is 
feeling which ultimately supplies the stimulus or force to voli- 
tion, and intellect which guides or illumines it. 2 

1 Otit lines of Psychology, pp. 451, 452, 453- 

2 Ibid, pp. 573, 574. 



68 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

From the premises before us two or three simple but 
important pedagogical rules are derived. One is that a 
gentle glow or wave of pleasurable feeling should play 
over the mind of the individual pupil and through the 
school. The intellect thrives best in a suitable emotional 
climate. Courage, hopefulness, appreciation, rather than 
their opposites, should temper the atmosphere of the 
schoolroom. Optimism is more congenial to the normal 
mind than pessimism. Another rule is that pupils should 
be protected against strongly excited feeling, no matter 
whether the feeling is. their own or that of another into 
which they enter through sympathy. The wheels of the 
intellect, so to speak, will not revolve freely in a flood of 
turbulent emotion. No gusts of anger, cyclones of pas- 
sion, or waves of sympathetic impulse in the school! 
Especially is the feeling that the teacher is unjust very 
harmful to the pupil. No immediate reference is here 
made to morals. ' ' Nothing retards the acquirement of 
the power of directing the intellectual processes so much," 
says Dr. Carpenter, in a striking passage, "as the 
emotional disturbance which the feeling of injustice pro- 
vokes." 1 Again, genuine interest may reach too high a 

1 This more extended passage may be quoted: "Those ' strong- 
minded' teachers who object to these modes of ' making things 
pleasant, ' as an unworthy and undesirable 'weakness, ' are ignorant 
that in this stage of the child-mind, the will — that is, the power of 
5<?//"-control — is weak; and that the primary object of education is 
to encourage and strengthen, not to repress, that power. Great 
mistakes are often made by parents and teachers, who, being 
ignorant of this fundamental fact of child-nature, treat as wilful- 
ness what is in reality just the contrary of will-fulness; being the 
direct result of the want of volitional control over the automatic 
activity of the brain. To punish a child for the want of obedience 
which it has not the power to render, is to inflict an injury which 
may almost be said to be irreparable. For nothing tends so much 
to prevent the healthful development of the moral sense, as the 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 69 

pitch. When Sir Isaac Newton saw that the train of 
reasoning which he had so long been following would 
establish his working hypothesis, his emotions would 
not allow him to continue, and he was obliged to 
hand his manuscripts over to a friend to complete the 
work. 

Next y we come to the intellectual activities as congruous 
and incongruous. — Here we reach the application of the law 
of congruity to education that, considered from the point 
of view of the school, is the most important of all. So 
much will be admitted by those at least who regard teach- 
ing as the main function of the school. We must there- 
fore proceed more slowly with this division of the subject. 
In fact, it is the main topic of this report. Still, it is not 
proposed to deal in detail with the nature or the relations 
of the cognitive elements. These elements are treated in 
every text-book of psychology; and, although some of 
the treatment may be false, the commonly accepted views 
will answer the present purpose. 

infliction of punishment which the child feels to be unjust; and 
nothing retards the acquirement of the power of directing the in- 
tellectual processes so much as the emotional disturbance which 
the feeling of injustice provokes. Hence the determination, often 
expressed, to break the will of an obstinate child by punishment, 
is almost certain to strengthen these reactionary influences. 
Many a child is put into ' durance vile ' for not learning ' the 
little busy bee, ' who simply cannot give its small mind to the task, 
whilst disturbed by stern commands and threats of yet severer 
punishment for a disobedience it cannot help; when a suggestion 
kindly and skillfully adapted to its automatic nature, by directing 
the turbid current of thought and feeling into a smoother channel, 
and guiding the activity which it does not attempt to oppose, shall 
bring about the desired result, to the surprise alike of the baffled 
teacher, the passionate pupil, and the perplexed bystanders." — 
Mental Psychology, pp. 134-135. 



7° 



STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 



I. Here, as in the case of cognition, feeling, and will, 
we observe both mutual opposition and reciprocal aid. Up 
to a certain point, cognitive elements grow together; be- 
yond that point, the greater the energy expended on one 
kind of reaction, the less can be expended on another 
kind. The completed action of perception involves mem- 
ory; but energetic observation, as of a single object, is at 
the expense of memory, while intense memory, on the 
other hand, tends to withdraw attention from surround- 
ing objects. The imagination stimulates the thought- 
processes until the point is reached where it assumes the as- 
cendant and reflection retires into the background. Imag- 
ination and reflection, both in an excited state, cannot 
dwell together in the same person or hardly in the same 
house. Sense-perception furnishes the logical faculties 
needed materials; still, become too obtrusive, sense-per- 
ception is fatal to thought. Men or peoples who live in 
the senses do not live in the reason, and vice versa. 

This point is pedagogically so important that we may 
well dwell upon it a little longer. The Natural 
Realists make the sense-elements of knowledge prominent 
in the school. Originating as a reaction from excessive 
devotion to the printed page, the Realistic movement has 
been most fruitful of good results. With it are identified 
the great names of Comenius and Pestalozzi. To it we 
are indebted for the enlargement of science teaching, and 
the extended use of object lessons and objective methods 
of instruction. At the same time, the true limits of sense- 
realism are soon reached. Knowledge begins with the 
senses, but does not end with the senses. Properly 
speaking, a developing mind soon leaves them behind. 
Sensation is but a coarse form of feeling, and is subject to 
the same law as feeling. An excess of sense-elements in 
the mind smothers the rational elements. A blinding 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 7 1 

flash of lightning or a deafening peal of thunder arrests 
the operations of the higher mental activities; while less 
powerful sense impressions produce a more lasting, if a 
less intense, effect. The great scientific discoveries have 
not been made in immediate contact with nature, but in 
the retirement of the study. Nor is time the only ele- 
ment that is involved in this fact; when immediate con- 
tact exists, and is vital, nature may overpower the 
mind. It has been said that the machine may be lost 
in its parts, or the picture in the colors that compose it. 
Equally may the universe be lost in the multitude of the 
stars. Concentrated attention upon the technic of an art 
retards the development of its higher elements. A house- 
builder is not likely to excel as an architect; the practical 
elements of the trade exclude the ideal elements that 
are essential to the art. On this basis Aristotle's 
prejudice against useful studies rested. " There can be 
no doubt, ' ' he wrote, ' ' that children should be taught 
those useful things which are really necessary, but not all 
things; for occupations are divided into liberal and illiberal; 
and to young children should be imparted only such kinds 
of knowledge as will be useful to them without vulgar- 
izing them. And any occupation, art, or science which 
makes the body or soul or mind of the freeman less fit for 
the practice or exercise of virtue, is vulgar; wherefore we 
call those arts vulgar wdiich tend to deform the body, and 
likewise all paid employments, for they absorb and degrade 
the mind." 1 

Abstract thinking — the thinking of relations and unities 
— which is the highest form of thought, is possible only 
when the mind has been unsensed or dematerialised . 
Whether instruction in physics should begin with theory 
or experiment is a mooted question. Begin where the 

1 The Politics, VIII : 2. 



72 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

teacher may, he has not taught the subject until he has 
taught those logical elements that give it its character. 
Still more, an excess of brilliant experiments may hinder 
rather than hasten the work. Experiments are like ex- 
amples, of which it has been said: 

Examples may be heaped until they hide 
The rules that they were made to render plain. 

II. The practical application of the principles of con- 
gruence to teaching involves the selection and grouping 
of studies. It brings before us the large subject to which 
the terms "correlation," "coordination," "organiza- 
tion," and "concentration" of studies have been some- 
what indiscriminately applied. It is not proposed to 
discuss these terms in this report, or even the subject 
itself, save as it involves fundamental principles. But to 
do even as much as this makes it necessary to state the 
principal laws relating to mental energy. 

1. When any stimulus, as a sense object, an idea, or a 
lesson, is applied to the mind, the mind is not at once 
fully energized, but some time must elapse before it swells 
to the maximum of power. 

2. This maximum of power continues for a time, or, 
in the language of science, mental energy tends to persist. 

3. The maximum cannot, however, be indefinitely 
maintained. On the contrary, when the mental current 
reaches what may be called the fatigue-point it begins to fall 
off in volume, but the fall is less rapid than the previous 
rise. Still the volume can be temporarily renewed, 
in part or in whole, by the application of a stronger 
stimulus. 

4. An interruption of the mental current retards the 
energizing process, or frustrates the reaching of the 
maximum of power. Such interruption is caused by the 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 73 

introduction of incongruous materials. If the incon- 
gruity be of a marked character, the mind will come to a 
state of rest, or a new current flowing from a new center 
will be started. 

5. Through repetition, the energizing process becomes 
easier and more rapid. Repeated activity in the same 
direction tends to groove the mind, or, to change the fig- 
ure, the stream of activity digs out for itself a permanent 
channel of discharge. 

6. Mental power is of two kinds, specific and generic. 
In other words, the power that is generated in any activ- 
ity can be fully used again in the same kind of activity, 
but only partly used in other kinds — the measure of the 
difference being the relative unlikeness of the two 
activities. 

7. Mental fatigue, like mental power, is also specific or 
generic. The mind may need rest from a certain kind of 
activity, or it may need rest from all kinds, or from all 
energetic kinds. 

These psychic laws have their analogues in physical 
laws. The physiological psychologists find the causes 
in nerve and brain action, the explanation going back to 
the familiar functions of waste and repair. Moreover, 
these laws cannot be stated in quantitative terms. No one 
can tell, in general, how long it takes fully to energize a 
mind at a given time, or how far removed the fatigue- 
point is from the initial point of greatest energy. Very 
much depends upon age, discipline, physical health, the 
character of the stimulus, mental' aptitude, and other cir- 
cumstances. As a rule, the periods lengthen as the indi- 
vidual passes from childhood to youth and from youth to 
manhood. That is, a man's mental force is less quickly 
aroused and mobilized than a child's, but it tends to per- 
sist much longer, 



74 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

III. From the laws of congruence and energy we derive 
some important rules of teaching, and as they, or at least 
some of them, bear on the selection and grouping of 
studies they will be stated in this place. While these 
laws are applicable to all grades of teaching, they are par- 
ticularly important in relation to primary teaching. 

1. Sufficient time must be allowed for the pupil to 
collect his energies, to mobilize his forces. Slow and 
halting recitations tend to dulness of mind, while hurried 
recitations develop either confusion or shallowness. There 
must be a certain singleness or isolation of the fact or idea. 
"The child must be accustomed to give one impression 
time to take root, ' ' says Radstock, • ' and not follow it 
immediately by a corresponding action, that it may not 
pass away with that action into air. ' ' The same writer 
quotes the following from I^azarus, with approval : ' 'Deep 
thinking requires time; it is therefore a great pedagogical 
mistake if teachers — as is now generally done — urge their 
pupils to answer rapidly, and praise those who immedi- 
ately have an answer ready. This causes everything to 
be lowered to a mere effort of mechanical memory. The 
pupil should be given time for individual contemplation, 
for deep and energetic thought-labor." 1 This does not 
imply that lessons are not to be well prepared and subjects 
well thought out beforehand. When the fullest prepara- 
tion has been made, there is still opportunity for energetic 
thought at the time of the recitation. 

2. The pupil should be held to the same subject as long 
as the mental current flows with full volume. To no new 
subject can all the energy that has been aroused by any 
activity be transferred, and to some subjects none what- 
ever. Unnecessary changes from subj ect to subj ect , or from 
lesson to lesson, involve the dissipation, and subsequent 

1 Habit, pp. 36-37. 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 75 

loss, of both time and power, the amount of which will 
depend mainly upon the relative congruity or incongruity 
of the different subjects or activities. More power can be 
transferred from Latin to Greek than from French to 
German. This is Dr. Bain's explanation of the rule 
laid down: "We know well enough that the nervous 
currents, when strongly aroused in any direction, tend 
to persist for some time; in the act of learning, this 
persistence will count in stamping a new impression; while 
part of the effect of a lesson must be lost in hurrying with- 
out a moment's break to something new, even although 
the change is of the nature of relief." 1 Shifting the 
mind from one subject to another may be compared to 
shifting a locomotive from one track to another; or, better 
still, it may be compared to shifting locomotives every mile. 

3. Advantage should be taken of favoring times to do 
certain kinds of work. The more difficult subjects should 
be pursued by a pupil or student when both body and 
mind are fresh and vigorous. It is the flood- tide, not the 
ebb-tide, that brings the great ships up to the dock. 

4. Before the pupil reaches the fatigue-point, the teacher 
should permit him either to take up another subject or to 
drop study for the time altogether. By the fatigue-point 
is meant, not the listlessness or dulness of inattention, but 
weariness growing from legitimate labor. Persistent 
application on a stream of falling energy involves waste 
of time and power, and may lead to serious results. To 
some extent, no doubt, the needed relief can be had 
through a change of method or by bringing forward 
some new aspect of the subject. 

5. Whether the pupil should take up a new study or 
drop all study for the time, depends upon the kind of 
fatigue that has supervened. Diminished power for one 

1 John Stuart Mill, p. 23. 



j6 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

activity is not diminished power for all activities. Thus, 
a pupil who has studied arithmetic or algebra as long as 
it is profitable to-day, will take up geography or history 
with interest, and vice versa. To a degree, studies are 
like gases, they are vacuums one to another. As a jar 
that is already rilled with hydrogen will still hold as 
much carbonic acid as a jar of the same size that is 
empty, so a pupil that is satisfied for the present with 
mathematics will pursue literature with interest and profit. 

6. The school course of study should be made up with 
constant reference to the psychic laws that have been laid 
down. Studies should be chosen and combined; that is, 
with reference to economy of time and power. Into the 
question how far psychology, and how far environment, 
should control the educational ideal, and so the educa- 
tional material, we need not enter. No one denies that 
pyschology must largely influence the choice of studies 
and almost wholly control their coordination. 

7. In particular should the working programme of the 
school be made up with reference to the same principles, 
and for the same reasons. 

8. The principle of congruence and its limitations have 
important applications to elective studies in colleges and 
universities. In filling out election blanks, it is believed 
that students who are wholly left to themselves often choose 
studies which make strange bedfellows. Nor is this sur- 
prising; the criteria that should govern such choices are 
considerably subtile and intricate. This topic, however, 
will come before us again. 

The arguments on which the three last rules rest are 
practically the same. They involve the important sub- 
ject of concentration. Congruent studies reenforce one 
another with respect to both content and mental aptitude: 
one subject involves other subjects. The physicist must 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. JJ 

be a mathematician, the historian must be acquainted 
with politics and political economy, and the geologist must 
be familiar with chemistry, botany, and zoology. For a 
time depth and breadth vary directly, after that indirectly. 
But in the absolute sense a specialist is an impossibility. 
An astronomer cannot study the moon by itself, or a physi- 
ologist the eye. No one object or subject can be under- 
stood when taken alone; it is related to other objects; it is 
a part of the universe. Still, to be effective the mind 
must be grooved, and this involves the repetition of the 
same act and of similar acts. Once more, if the practi- 
cal requirements of the school compel a study to be dis- 
continued before the fatigue-point is reached, thus depart- 
ing from the ideal, then some related subject maybe taken 
up, because more of the power that has been accumulated 
can be transferred to a related than to an unrelated sub- 
ject. And still the nearness of the pupil to the fatigue- 
point must be considered. In other words, whether a 
pupil should be transferred to a related or an unrelated 
subject, must depend upon himself and his present mental 
condition. 

IV. But congruence alone must not dictate the course of 
study, the daily school programme, or the college student's 
elections. Fortunately, there may be power for one sub- 
ject when there is none for another subject. We have 
spoken of the mind under the similitude of a stream or 
current. The fact is, however, that the mind is less like 
a river from which you may take water for any purpose, 
than it is like a bank where the total amount of money on 
deposit is divided among many different accounts, and is 
subject to check by as many different persons. There 
may be money for the teacher of history or literature when 
there is none for the - teacher of mathematics or physics. 



78 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

This is due to specialization of powers — to the difference 
between specific and generic force. The one-study col- 
lege is therefore just as unphilosophical as the school 
that breaks the hours up into crumbs of time. Thus the 
fundamental laws of mental energy, or of interest if you 
will, impose a veto upon an exaggerated form of concen- 
tration. 

It is further to be observed that concentration is a rela- 
tive term at best. No wise teacher proposes to limit the 
pupil to a single study or class of exercises. To do so 
would in reality involve the dogma of formal discipline in 
its most extreme form. Another remark is that concen- 
tration in the lower school may be overdone as easily as 
expansion in the higher school. It has been shown 
time and again that the child may be overtaught certain 
subjects. His impressible mind may be so deeply and 
narrowly grooved that it can never be broadly cultivated. 
It becomes indurated, as it were. This result may be due 
in part to the intensity of the activity, but it is more due 
to its persistence. As the mind matures, there is less and 
less need of caution on this point. The pupil gets farther 
and farther away from the mechanical elements of knowl- 
edge, becomes more and more occupied with the higher 
elements, and so is less responsive to narrowing influences. 
While the child's activities must be duly limited, his 
full development still calls for a relative profusion of 
educational material. 

Once more, congruence itself is not an abstract quality 
of studies. On the contrary, it is eminently concrete. The 
practical question is not the general one, whether such and 
such studies or topics will go well together in general, but 
the specific one, whether they will go well together in the 
case of such or such a student. Studies that sometimes repel 
at other times attract one another; or studies that seem to 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 79 

have no affinities, but the contrary, dwell together in some 
minds in perfect unity. It is common to find students 
who excel in studies as unlike as literature or language 
and mathematics or physics. The rule, however, is 
probably the other way. For some reasons it would be 
better to speak of the congruence of mental faculties 
than of studies. 

At this point some very practical questions confront the 
teacher and superintendent. How long should a pupil be 
kept at work on the same subject? How much work 
should he do in one school-day ? How frequently should 
he change from one subject to another? How many 
studies should he have ? No man can answer these ques- 
tions in formulae; the teacher and superintendent must 
answer them as they arise, and to do so they will find their 
best observation and judgment seriously taxed. It may 
well be doubted whether the common schools are not now 
sacrificing the best results to swollen programmes and 
short exercises. The question is one that the superin- 
tendent should study with a transcript of the foregoing 
facts in one hand and his course of study and time-table 
in the other. There is no reasonable doubt that much 
evil in the school that is now charged to the account of 
overwork, should rather be charged to work that is done 
in the wrong way. 

The psychic facts to which the names of congruence 
and energy have been given, demand fuller investigation 
than they have hitherto received. It is well known that 
school programmes, both in respect to the coordination 
of subjects and the length of exercises, commonly rest 
upon a crude empirical basis. The factors that control 
those who make them, appear to be the necessities of the 
school, real or supposed, tradition, and individual experi- 
ence. This empiricism is not surprising, considering the 



80 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

meager attention that psychologists and pedagogists have 
given to the principles that underlie good school pro- 
grammes. Very little attention has been given to the 
time elements involved in psychic energy as applied to 
school exercises. When three heavy subjects appear upon 
the programme for the day — subjects demanding the fixa- 
tion of the attention — you will not indeed commonly find 
them all crowded into the same session; but that is about 
as far as the attempt to accomodate the work to the pupil's 
ability in this regard has been carried. Such delicate 
questions as these occur: How much time elapses between 
the application of different stimuli to the child-mind at 
different ages, and the development of maximum psychic 
power ? How long is the interval between such maximum 
and the fatigue-point ? In respect to the swelling of the 
mental current to its full volume, and in respect to its 
persistence, how much depends upon the pupil's age? 
How much upon his mental character ? How much upon 
the peculiar stimuli at different ages ? And how much 
upon the teacher's skill? It is easy to translate these 
questions into the practical interests of the school. They 
cannot be answered without much careful observation and 
collaboration of facts. The whole subject should enlist 
the serious attention of students of child-study, both 
under its physiological and psychological aspects, and it is 
earnestly recommended to their attention. 

V. The correlation of the teacher and the text-book, 
if one be used, demands something more than passing 
notice. Dr. Bain has said that undoubtedly the best of all 
ways to learn anything is to have a competent teacher 
"dole out a fixed quantity of matter every day, just 
sufficient to be taken in and no more; the pupils to apply 
themselves to the matter so imparted, and to nothing else. 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 8l 

The singleness of aim is favorable," he urges, "to the 
greatest rapidity of acquirement; and any defects should 
be left out of account until one thread of ideas is firmly 
set in the mind." Still he admits that not unfrequently, 
and not improperly, the teacher has a text-book to aid 
him in his work. To make this a help and not a hin- 
drance demands the greatest delicacy, since the pupil 
must be kept in one single line of thought, and never 
be required to comprehend on the same point conflict- 
ing or varying statements. Even the foot-notes may have 
to be disregarded in the first instance, since they act like 
a second author, and so keep up an irritating friction. 1 

Nothing else is so essential to successful elementary 
teaching as unity or congruence of subject-matter. Dr. 
Bain does not exaggerate the value of the "one thread of 
ideas, ' ' or the ' 'one single line of thought. ' ' His scruple 
about foot-notes even is often justified. These more defi- 
nite rules will determine the teacher's general relations to 
the text-book. 

1. If the book is the main source of instruction, the 
teacher should teach the book; that is, the matter of the 
book. If foot-notes tend to confuse, what shall be said of 
a teacher who takes an independent line from the begin- 
ning? No wise teacher certainly would give a pupil 
who is just beginning a new subject two text-books. 
A good Sunday school-teacher, dealing with the life of 
Jesus in a primary class, would not try to follow all 
the Gospels, or even two of them, at the same time; 
rather than do that, it would be better to select his 
material here and there and to blend it in a new gospel 
of his own. The teacher may teach something more or 
something less than the book teaches on a single point, 
but nothing different or contradictory. 

1 Practical Essays, pp. 218-219. 



82 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

2. The teacher should also follow the methods of pre- 
sentation that the book employs. Nothing could be more 
absurd than for a teacher who has assigned to a class a 
lesson that is presented inductively to go ahead and teach 
it deductively. 

3. The teacher should study to make the first presenta- 
tion of a lesson successful. If a second presentation 
is required, besides the loss of time, the mind is left in 
a littered-up condition that is confusing. This is the rea- 
son why it is often more difficult to teach a subject well 
to a pupil to whom it has been imperfectly taught than 
to a person to whom it is wholly unknown. 

4. If the subject-matter of the book or of a single les- 
son is radically bad, or the method decidedly faulty, it 
should be laid aside altogether. If only certain portions 
are objectionable, or certain methods of presentation, the 
teacher should not assign these to be studied, but should 
teach such subjects de novo. This observation assumes, 
of course, that the teacher is able to do so. 

5*. The wise teacher will not present a subject in more 
than one way, unless he has failed in the first way. It 
is folly to give a second explanation of the division of a 
fraction by a fraction, if the first explanation has been un- 
derstood. The same remark will apply to casting interest 
and to many other subjects. It is well enough for the 
author of an arithmetic to give two or more methods of 
performing these operations, thus giving the teacher an 
option; but the teacher should choose the method which 
he thinks best adapted to his purpose, and then adhere to 
it until the subject is thoroughly taught. At the stage 
of teaching now supposed, never give more than one defi- 
nition or rule on a single point. Superfluous illustrations 
also not only do no good, but they do positive harm, 
begetting confusion worse confounded. 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 83 

It will be understood that these rules relative to the 
use of the text-book apply particularly to the early stages 
of teaching, and that they would require very important 
modifications if they are to be applied to the advanced, 
rational, or critical stage of education. Narrow teaching 
must come before broad teaching. In time the pupil, if 
rightly handled, will get out of his single line of thought; 
will be able to deal with subjects; can criticize and weigh 
different definitions, contradictory views and rules, and 
opposing opinions; can use " a variety of books, compare 
authorities, and employ different methods of procedure. 
Thus, Dr. Bain recommends that in geometry the pupil 
should be held strictly to Euclid until he has become 
thoroughly at home on the main ideas and leading propo- 
sitions; then he is safe in dipping into other manuals, 
comparing differences of treatment, and widening his 
knowledge by additional theorems and by various modes 
of demonstration. 1 But the time when all this can be 
done will not be hastened by pushing the pupil forward 
prematurely. The teacher who inundates the pupil with all 
kinds of things is the pupil's worst enemy, unless indeed 
it be the teacher who keeps him too long and too intensely 
harping on the same string. It is only the knowledge 
that really energizes the mind which is valuable. 

If it be objected that these rules contemplate a text-book 
grind, two replies maybe made. It is not attempted to say 
how far books should be used in teaching, or to discuss the 
relations of oral teaching and book teaching. The rules laid 
down assume that books will be used, though not to the 
exclusion of the other method. Books have been used in 
schools since the invention of writing, or at least since the 
invention of printing, and our oral methods and real teach- 
ing will not dislodge them. But, further, much that has 

1 Practical Essays, p. 216. 



84 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

been said under this head applies to oral teaching. The 
teacher should not be contradictory, but consistent; should 
aim to make the first presentation of a subject successful, 
and should adhere to a single line of ideas until it is fixed in 
the mind, no matter whether he teaches orally or uses a 
book. In fact, there is the more reason for emphasizing 
some of the rules laid down in the case of oral teaching, 
because the pupil then has less opportunity to clarify his 
mind by a comparison of ideas and statements. 

At least mention should be made of examinations, over 
which so fierce a contention has been waged in recent years. 
There is no reason to hope, or to fear, that they will pass out 
of the vSchool. None are likely to deny that examinations 
are a very valuable teaching exercise. Nor is there much 
reason to doubt that they will continue to be used as tests 
at promotion time — to a less degree than twenty years ago, 
let us hope ! Heretofore slight attention has been paid to 
the relations of studies in arranging programmes of ex- 
aminations. The nearness or remoteness of studies from 
one another has been little regarded. At another point, a 
much more serious mistake has been made. Pupils have 
sometimes been shifted from subject to subject so frequently 
that they have had little opportunity to show what the} 7 
could do; and then again they have been kept at work 
until both the specific and the generic fatigue-points have 
been passed. The correction of both evils must be sought 
in the laws of congruence and energy. 

VI. It has already been remarked that the laws of con- 
gruity and energy bear on the college or university 
student's choice of electives. How many subjects should 
such a student have at the same time, and what should be 
their relations? Should he scatter his energies over a 
large field, or concentrate them on a small one ? 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 85 

Professor Trowbridge, discussing some years ago the 
subject of economy in college work, urged that the Har- 
vard student should study two subjects for at least three 
months, and two subjects only; one of these should be a 
hard subject, giving plenty of opportunity for applica- 
tion, while the other might be a comparatively light sub- 
ject that could serve as a mental rest through the change 
which it afforded. At the end of three months two other 
subjects might be taken up, and the first ones be relin- 
quished for a time; and so on to the end of the course. 
After observing that some studies are so nearly related 
that intellectual effort in one is of service to an- 
other, while others are not; that Latin and Greek, phil- 
osophy and history, political economy and history, are 
examples of the one class, while German and French, 
chemistry or physics and philosophy, are examples of the 
other, he examined the nineteen or twenty subjects which 
form in the main the elective curriculum of Harvard 
University. He found that the division of subjects could 
be reduced to twelve by grouping the subjects which 
aid each other, as follows: Latin and Greek; French and 
French history; German and German history; politi- 
cal economy and history; chemistry alone or in conjunction 
with English; Spanish and Spanish history; philosophy 
and history; physics alone; Semitics and ancient history; 
fine arts and music with English, or fine arts and music as 
a let-up with any of the severer studies; mathematics and 
English; romance philology and its suitable language. 
Having twelve subjects, the student could pursue three of 
these in the nine months of each college year, and in four 
years he could accomplish the whole twelve, provided, of 
course, he wished to take all the subjects enumerated. 1 

This scheme has been introduced mainly for the sake of 

1 "She Atlantic Monthly, November, 1888, pp.671, 672. 



86 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

illustration. In criticising it we should remember that at 
Harvard University all studies are elective, save only a 
modicum of English and physics. Still, it may be said 
that, although propounded for a laudable purpose, the 
scheme is open to one or more serious objections. Within 
the successive three months' periods, study is certainly 
over-specialized, and particularly in the first college years. 
The common Freshman will not, and cannot, work up 
his available power in one main line of study. The laws 
of mental energy are violated. The range of interests is 
too narrow. In the later years of the course this objec- 
tion would be less serious. Other important questions, as 
whether the time allotted would be sufficient for the lead- 
ing subjects, occur , but they need not be considered. This 
branch of the subject is dismissed with the remark that 
college electives call for a fuller examination than they 
have yet received, particularly in respect to the principles 
that should underlie elections and practical administration. 
There is good reason to think that in some quarters, at 
least, laissez faire has been carried too far. 

VII. The last topic to be mentioned is graduate study. 
While there is not, or at least should not be, a chasm 
between undergraduate and graduate work, still there 
are palpable differences of ideal and method involved. 
The first period looks to general cultivation; the second 
period, to special cultivation. The undergraduate need 
not lay equal stress upon all the studies that he pursues; 
he may emphasize some more and some less; but he 
should not sacrifice general culture to Greek scholarship, 
Ivatin scholarship, mathematical scholarship, or any other 
kind of special scholarship. The graduate student, on 
the other hand, should go much further on the road to 
specialization, and particularly the candidate for the 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 87 

doctor's degree. But even here specialization may be 
overdone. It is not desirable that the student should 
confine himself for three years to a special line of study. 
The first objection to such a course is, that it over grooves 
the mind at the age of the ordinary student who is doing 
such work. Even the graduate student should not lose 
sight of general cultivation and fall into stark profession- 
alism. But secondly, a single study will not absorb to 
advantage the student's powers. It will be carried on in 
derogation of the law of specific and generic fatigue. One 
brain tract will be overworked while others are neglected. 
If the professional man needs a let-up, or an avocation, to 
keep his mind out of the ensnaring groove, much more the 
student who is still lingering in the schools. 

Then how many subjects should the graduate student 
have? The answer will depend somewhat upon the 
student himself, as well as upon other considerations. As 
a rule, there should be at least two distinct lines of work, 
one of which may be heavy and one light. The first 
may include different subjects chosen with reference to 
congruity, as Greek literature and Greek history, Latin 
literature and Roman history; but there should certainly 
be a second distinct line of work, separate and apart from 
the first one, also made up with regard to congruity, 
that will at once cultivate breadth and also consume time 
and power that the main subject cannot absorb. 

At this point a cautionary remark may be dropped. It 
is a mistake to suppose that subjects are congruous 
merely because they bear the same name in part. Con- 
gruity is determined by elements and not by words. For 
example, how much have Greek literature and Greek 
antiquities, or Latin literature and Roman antiquities, in 
common ? Certainly less than some enthusiastic scholars 
are wont to assume. 



88 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Perhaps it will be said that this report is conservative 
on the subject of specialization. This is no accident. 
There is great reason for reconsidering the relations of 
education and erudition. Professor Davidson, of our 
own country, says it is the failure to draw this necessary 
distinction ' ' that is misleading our universities into the 
error of allowing students to ' elect ' specialities before 
they have completed the cycle of education, the result of 
which is that we have few men of thorough education or 
of broad and comprehensive views. If this evil is ever 
to be remedied," he urges, "our universities will be 
obliged either to abandon this practice, or else to give up 
all attempt to impart education, and devote themselves 
solely to erudition, leaving the other to academies, 
gymnasia, or the like." 1 

Professor Butcher, contending for the unity of learning, 
declares that it is at present endangered by disintegrating 
tendencies. He alleges that excessive specialization is 
the death of science, and that it involves the dissolution 
of society. " Conceive, if you can," are his words, "a 
world of specialists, in which each man's vision and labor 
is concentrated on some microscopic point in the field of 
human activity, and the very idea of a political and social 
organism disappears. There is a point at which the 
subdivision of labor in the intellectual sphere must be 
checked, and some unifying principle introduced, if we 
are to retain any rational conception of man, or of the 
world, or of human life." 3 

Professor I^aurie, of Edinburgh, also observes: "The 
stress of competition among individuals and nations com- 
pels us, unhappily, more and more to give a specific 
character to our training, and to ignore the larger national 

1 The Education of the Greek People, p. 23. 

2 Some Aspects of the Greek Genius, pp. 209, 210. 



THE LAWS OF MENTAL CONGRUENCE. 89 

and human aims. It is clear, however, that in so far as 
we lose sight of the latter in the interest of the former we 
err: because it is the broad human and national element 
in education that gives character and power. If we fail 
in giving this, all specific activities of mind will be weak- 
ened by the weakening of their foundation in the man as 
a man. In the systematization of education accordingly, 
the real problem amounts in these days to this: How 
shall we rear specific aptitudes on the basis of a com- 
mon instruction and discipline which shall contemplate 
the man and the citizen, and only in the second place the 
worker?" 1 

And finally, Professor Paulsen sounds a note of warn- 
ing from the greatest of the German universities. Plead- 
ing for the unity of the university, he speaks of the 
danger of disintegration through the diminished influence 
of the faculty of arts. "Of course," hesa}^s, "there is no 
possibility of retrogression in the division of labor, upon 
which depend the mighty advances of scientific research. 
We are called upon, however, to oppose the spirit of 
'specialism,' of over-narrow self-confinement and small- 
souled satisfaction with one's self: and everyone who 
belongs to a university is likewise called upon to help 
along the opposition." Dr. Paulsen suggests several 
remedies, the principal one of which is the maintenance 
of the old conception of liberal culture. "In particular, 
the tendency toward generalization of study, the philo- 
sophical sense which ever stands ready to turn the details 
to good account in the service of the ultimate and highest 
insight, must always find its proper home in the faculty of 
philosophy. Herein may be found a peculiarly appro- 
priate field for 'public' lectures; to present to a wider circle 
of hearers, to the disciples of all related branches of 

1 Pre-Christian Education, Introduction. 



go STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

learning, whatever problems and results of general inter- 
est are included in a special subject." l 

This report has embraced so many topics that its leading 
purpose may possibly have become somewhat obscured. 
At all events, it will be well to restate that purpose in a 
few clear terms. This is to apply the law of mental con- 
gruence, as limited by the laws of mental energy, to some 
important pedagogical problems, as the fabrication of a 
course of study, the making up of a working programme 
for a school, the choice of college electives, and the sub- 
ject of graduate study. Congruence means the meeting 
or bringing together of things that are consonant or re- 
lated; and as applied to the problems enumerated it looks 
to the deepening, broadening, and strengthening of study 
and teaching by coordinating those studies and elements 
of studies that tend to support and reenforce one another. 
Full discussion has not been attempted. It is hoped that 
the leading principles have been clearly and strongly 
stated, and that they have been so firmly applied to the 
problems enumerated that the report may prove useful as 
a basis for further study. 

1 The German Universities \ p. 234. Translated by E. D. Perry. 




IV. 

THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF 

TEACHING. 

HE word ' ' science ' ' is derived from the Latin 
scientia {scire, to know), and means knowl- 
edge. The word " art " comes from the 
Latin ars (*p<*v } to Jit, to join together), and 
means skill, contrivance, or method. 

The fundamental difference between the two is that the 
object of science is knowledge, while the objects of art 
are works. In general the distinction is the same as that 
between theory and practice. Theory is knowledge, 
practice is doing. Both spring from activity, but from 
different kinds of activity. Science, or theory, involves 
primarily intellectual activity; practice, or art, enlists the 
faculties, aptitudes, and dexterities of the body. Com- 
monly, however, the two elements are more or less inter- 
mingled, as we shall see hereafter. 

But while art is primarily doing or skill in an active 
or practical form, it is secondarily a body of rules intended 
to direct or guide doing or skill. This is an important 
distinction. Archbishop Thomson says: "The distinc- 
tion between science and art is, that a science is a body of 
principles and deductions to explain the nature of some 
object-matter. An art is a body of precepts with practical 
skill for the completion of some work. A science teaches 
us to know, an art to do." Both aspects of art are 
here recognized, but not in their natural order. Mr. J. 
S. Mill says: "Science and art differ from one another 

91 



92 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

as the understanding differs from the will, or as the in- 
dicative mood in grammar differs from the imperative. 
The one deals in facts, the other in precepts. Science is a 
collection of truths; art a body of rules or directions for 
conduct. The language of science is, ' This is,' or ' This 
is not,' ' This does or does not happen.' The language of 
art is, 'Do this,' 'Avoid that. Science takes cognizance 
of a phenomenon, and endeavors to discern its law; art 
proposes to itself an end, and looks out for means to 
effect it.' " Nothing could be better than this as far as it 
goes; but it will be seen that Mr. Mill limits art to rules 
and precepts, that is, to a body of teaching, thus over- 
looking the purely practical element altogether. Mr. 
James Harris commits the same error. ''Science," he 
says, ' ' gives principles, art gives rules. ' ' 

The two aspects of art suggest several observations. 

1. Power or skill is the fundamental element, as both 
the etymology of the word " art " and an analysis of the 
thing itself show. 

2. An art may be practiced, and often is practiced, by 
those who have given to the rules governing it little atten- 
tion. Such are guided by what is sometimes called ' ' the 
rule of thumb." Still more, an art may be carried on, 
and commonly is carried on even by those who have mas- 
tered the rules, without immediate or conscious reference 
to them. The rules that such persons practice have be- 
come second nature, controlling habit. 

3. An art considered as a collection of precepts, methods, 
or rules may be studied, and frequently is studied, by 
those who do not expect to practice it at all. This they 
do as a source of mental improvement or enjoyment. 

4. An art as a collection of precepts is knowledge, but 
it is not scientific knowledge. Science is concerned with 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 93 

facts and principles ending in themselves ; art with 
methods or ways of doing that end in works. In science 
truth is the sole end. In art it is a means to an 
end. However, if the rules or methods are true and 
good they rest on facts and principles. To say, 
"The first reaction of the mind upon any subject is 
analysis, the second synthesis," is to utter a fact of 
science. To say," Present wholes before parts," "Bind 
up parts into wholes," is to utter rules of teaching. The 
person who observes these rules is so far forth a good 
practical teacher, exemplifying art in its original sense. 
" Repeated representations of an object deeply impress the 
mind; " " We know the concrete before the abstract, the 
particular before the general, the simple before the com- 
plex," — these are facts from which familiar pedagogical 
rules are deduced. Still, it must be remembered that 
' ' whole ' ' and ' ' part ' ' are relative words, and that nearly 
all objects are one or the other according as they are 
viewed. It is not meant of course that teaching should 
begin with the largest wholes, as geography with the 
globe. Again, it is not always thought necessary for- 
mally to express both terms of this relation. The axiom, 
I \ Repetition is the mother of studies, ' ' suggests the correl- 
ative rule; while the precept, " Proceed from the known 
to the unknown," suggests the correlative fact. Nor are 
the two terms always clearly thought out. Men of science 
go on discovering facts and truths without thinking of rules 
and methods that may be deduced from them; just as 
men of practice keep following a rule or a habit without 
stopping to think of its cause or reason. Moreover, it is 
often more difficult to find a practical application of a 
truth or fact than it is to find a scientific support for a 
precept or a method. It follows that while science is 
knowledge, it is not all knowledge. It is not even all 



94 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

systematized or organized knowledge, as the common 
definition asserts. A rule or method duly formulated is 
also knowledge, and, so far as it goes, organized knowl- 
edge as the words themselves imply. 

Again, method is used in a reflective or generalized 
sense. Methods involve certain general facts or princi- 
ples ; that is to say, they rest at last upon the human 
mind, and so may be subjected to scientific treatment. 
Method, accordingly, has its two aspects — one empirical 
and one scientific. As a body of rules propounded 
immediately to guide practice, method is art pure and 
simple, falling of course under the second aspect of that 
subject; as a body of rules, the origin, nature, and author- 
ity of which are to be explained, it is science pure 
and simple. Methodology is commonly used in the 
second of these senses. This the word itself suggests: 
it is the science of method. Descartes' s celebrated dis- 
course on method — the full title of which is ' ' Discourse 
on the Method of Rightly Conducting the Reason and 
Seeking Truth in the Sciences " — deals with the methods 
of the mind. It is a contribution to philosophy, is a 
scientific treatise. 

5. It is not strange, therefore, that science and art 
are often made to flow together, thus tending to 
speculative confusion. Most treatises on the theory 
and practice of medicine, and on the science and 
the art of teaching, are examples. The theory may 
be put by itself in the first part of the book, the 
art by itself in the second part; they may be mingled 
throughout; but the questions, "Is the characteristic 
feature of the matter knowledge or skill ? " ' ' Does 
it state a fact or tell you what to do ? " separate 
them as a flash of electricity resolves a drop of water into 
its component gases. The nature of science, the nature 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 95 

of art as practical skill, and the nature of art as rules are 
three different though closely related ideas. They must 
be clearly grasped by the sound thinker: For example, 
Cicero treated rhetoric as a science when he stated its 
facts and principles; he treated it as a reflective art when 
he laid down its rules and methods; he practiced rhetoric 
when he made speeches in the Forum and Senate House, 
and also, in the modern sense, when he wrote his' books, 
no matter what the subject. 

6. There is a difference of opinion as to the relation in 
time of science and art. Dr. McCosh presents this view: 

Art has in general preceded science. There were bleaching, 
dyeing, and tanning, and artificers in copper and iron before there 
was chemistry to explain the processes used. Men made wine be- 
fore there was any theory of fermentation; and glass and porcelain 
were manufactured before the nature of alkalies and earths had 
been determined. The pyramids of Nubia and Egypt, the pal- 
aces and sculptured slabs of Nineveh, the cyclopean walls of Italy 
and Greece, the obelisks and temples of India, the cromlechs and 
druidicial circles of countries formerly Celtic, all preceded the sci- 
ences of mechanics and architecture. There was music before there 
was a science of acoustics; and painting while yet there was no 
theory of colors and perspective. x 

Mr. Harris this view: 

If there were no theorems of science to guide the operations of 
art, there would be no art; but if there were no operations of art, 
there might still be theorems of science. Therefore science is prior 
to art. 

Both of these views are true in part and false in part. 
Science is not mere knowledge, but organized knowledge; 
art not mere practice, but elaborated or refined practice. 
Science is an advanced stage of knowing, as art is an ad- 
vanced stage of doing. Hence the question, Which is 
older, science or art ? is not the same as the question, 
Which is older, knowing or doing ? If the terms are 
1 The Divine Government, p. 140, 8th edition. 



96 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

employed in their strict acceptation, Dr. McCosh is right 
in general in respect to the early stage of their relations, 
while Mr. Harris is equally right in respect to their late 
stage; but if the terms are taken in the loose sense of 
knowledge and practice, then either one is partly right 
and partly wrong throughout the whole history of human 
development. There can be no doubt that to-day the arts 
depend far more upon the sciences than the sciences upon 
the arts. Dr. Whewell states the true relation thus: 

The principles which art involves, science alone evolves. The 
truths on which the success of art depends, lurk in the artist's 
mind in an undeveloped state, guiding his hand, stimulating his 
invention, balancing his judgment, but not appearing in the form 

of enunciated propositions Art in its earlier stages, at 

least, is widely different from science, independent of it, and 
anterior to it. At a later period, no doubt, art may borrow aid 
from science. * 

To go to the root of the matter, we will take up the 
relations of knowing and doing more carefully. 

Human activities are of two kinds, the spontaneous and 
the volitional, the instinctive and the conscious. The one 
kind springs from the automatic nature, the other from 
the will. Spontaneous activities antedate birth, and they 
cease only with death. They furnish the groundwork of 
all education. leaving out of account the organic func- 
tions, such as breathing and digestion, they bring the 
child into relation with the external world, and so fur- 
nish the beginning points of knowledge. An infant's in- 
stinctive beating of the floor with his feet or of the crib 
with his fists, his rolling of his eyes, and a hundred other 
instinctive movements mark important stages in his edu- 
cation. It is in such ways that he progressively learns 
that there is such a thing as environment, something sep- 

1 Philosophy of Inductive Science, Vol. II, pp. Ill, 112, 2d Edit. 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 97 

arate and apart from himself. Volitional activities are 
performed to accomplish an object, as when a child grasps 
a ball or seeks to seize the flame of a lamp. The char- 
acteristic of all such activities is aim or purpose, to develop 
which — that is, to expand the factors of intelligence and 
will in connection with motive — is the proper educational 
function. It is sometimes difficult to assign an action to 
its class, as automatic or conscious, but that in no way 
affects the distinction. While the relation of the two 
activities is an important subject, we are not here con- 
cerned with it beyond the primary fact that instinct pre- 
cedes intelligence. 

The relations of doing and learning may be thus summed 
up: (1) As we have seen, some of our instinctive activi- 
ties lead directly to contact with the external world, and 
so result in knowledge of that world and of ourselves. In 
this vague primary sense it may be said that all knowl- 
edge is conditioned upon doing. (2) Our natural activi- 
ties lead to artificial ones, and so to the formation of 
habits that lie proximate to knowledge. Such an activity 
as walking, for example, enlarges one's knowledge of the 
material world. (3) Then there are the accidents that 
lead to discovery, as when the Indian hunter, climbing 
up the mountain side, laid hold of the bush to sustain his 
weight, and, when it came away, saw the silver lying at its 
roots. (4) Next may be mentioned those experiments 
that are tried to find out something, without any definite 
idea or expectation of what it will be. (5) Practice 
tends to perfect knowledge that originates in all these 
ways. As Bacon says studies ' ' perfect nature, and are 
perfected by experience; for natural abilities are like 
natural plants that need pruning by study: and studies 
themselves do give forth directions too much at large, ex- 
cept they be bounded in by experience. ' ' 



98 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Important as are the causal effects of practice upon 
knowledge, it is easy to exaggerate them. Whenever an 
idea, athought, a datum of intelligence, leads to activity the 
order is reversed. It is just as certain that all the pur- 
posive or intentional activities follow knowledge as that 
all the instinctive activities precede it; the knowledge 
may be rudimentary and imperfect, but it is there. It is 
very true that there were bleaching, dyeing, tanning, and 
wine-making before men studied chemistry or discovered 
a theory of fermentation; but it is not true that men 
bleached and tanned, and made wine before they had ideas 
of the things which they wanted to do and of the ways in 
which they should do them. No doubt nature first taught 
men these processes through observation; but men car- 
ried them on with purpose from the very beginning, save 
as they have been slightly affected by accident. Once en- 
tered upon, the process of activity contributed to the 
enlargement of knowledge. The arts of teaching, preach- 
ing, and healing are older than the corresponding the- 
ories. At the same time there was no teaching, preaching, 
or healing until those engaging in those activities had 
ideas both of ends and of means. The arts and the theo- 
ries have grown up together. 

The internal relations of the two factors, it is hoped, 
have been made plain. The sciences find their applica- 
tions and uses in the arts, the arts find their causes and 
reasons in the sciences. The reciprocal relations of the 
two factors have not been better stated than by Sir Wil- 
liam Hamilton in this passage: 

The terms " theory " and "theoretical" are properly used in 
opposition to the terms ( ' practice ' ' and ' ' practical " ; in this sense 
they were exclusively employed by the ancients; and in this sense 
they are almost exclusively employed by the Continental philoso- 
phers. Practice is the exercise of an art, or the application of a 
science, in life, which application is itself an art, for it is not 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 99 

everyone who is able to apply all he knows; there being required, 
over and above knowledge, a certain dexterity and skill. Theory, 
on the contrary, is mere knowledge or science. There is a dis- 
tinction, but no opposition, between theory and practice; each to 
a certain extent supposes the other. On the one hand, theory is 
dependent on practice; practice must have preceded theory; for 
theory being only a generalization of the principles on which prac- 
tice proceeds, these must originally have been taken out of, or ab- 
stracted from, practice. On the other hand, this is true only to a 
certain extent; for there is no practice without a theory. The man 
of practice must have always known something, however little, of 
what he did, of what he intended to do, and of the means by which 
his intention was to be carried into effect. He was, therefore, not 
wholly ignorant of the principles of his procedure; he was a lim- 
ited, he was, in some degree, an unconscious, theorist As he 
proceeded, however, in his practice, and reflected on his perform- 
ance, his theory acquired greater clearness and extension, so that 
he became at last distinctly conscious of what he did, and could 
give, to himself and others, an account of his procedure. 

Per varios usus artem experientia fecit, 

Exemplo monstrante viam. 
In this view, theory is therefore simply a knowledge of the 
principles by which practice accomplishes its end. 1 

The Greeks and the Romans did not distinguish be- 
tween the arts and the sciences just as we are accustomed 
to do. The Greek r^v, which we render art, and from 
which we get "technic," "technical," etc., while it is 
denned "skill," "craft," "aptitude," in the lexicons, 
nearly corresponded with our science: German scholars 
have rendered it Wissenschaft. The L,atin lexicons define 
scientia "knowledge," "science," and "skill;" they define 
ars, ' ' skill, ' ' ' 'practice, ' ' and ' 'knowledge;" but, strangely 
enough, measured by our use of terms, the Romans called 
what we call the sciences artes and not scientiae. Broadly, 
however, the Roman arts, in a pedagogical sense, were 
studia, and our word "studies" renders artes much 

1 Metaphysics, Lecture X. 



100 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

better than ' ' sciences " or " arts. ' ' Some of the Latin 
arts were arts and some sciences, as we should call them. 
The Seven Liberal Arts of the Medieval schools were an 
outgrowth of the Graeco- Roman education. 1 They were: 

The Tri vtum : Grammar, dialectics, and rhetoric. 

The Quadrivium: Music, arithmetic, geometry, and 
astronomy. 

Gram, loquitur; Dia. vera docet; Rhet. verba colorat; 

Mus. canit ; Ar. numerat; Geo. ponderat ; Ast. colit 
astra. 

Our distinction of the arts and sciences had not been 
clearly thought out when all these studies were called 
' ' arts, ' ' and in our sense of the word they might have 
been more fitly called " sciences." The terms "art," 
' ' the arts, " ' l mechanic arts, " " industrial arts, " " prac- 
tical arts," "fine arts," "polite arts," and "arts" in 
' ' arts and sciences ' ' are rather applications of knowl- 
edge than knowledge itself; but the phrases " bachelor of 
arts," " master of arts, " and "the course in arts" still 
retain the ancient meaning of the word. 

The theoretical relations of science and art have now 
been treated, it is believed, with sufficient fulness. In- 
cidentally, also, the question, Of what value is the study 
of a science to the man who practices the corresponding 
art ? — has been touched. But that question should receive 
fuller treatment. The question is this: What reasons can 
be given why the man of practice should study the prin- 
ciples on which his art depends ? 

Dr. Campbell, discussing this question, says the art of 
living is built upon theology and ethics, or religion and 
morals; the art of surveying and accounting on mathe- 

1 See Davidson: Aristotle and the Ancient Educational Ideals, 
p. 239 , et. Seqq. 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. IOI 

matics; architecture and navigation on mathematics, 
natural philosphy, and geography; surgery on anatomy. 
He concludes, on the one hand, that valuable knowledge 
always leads to more practical skill and is perfected in it; 
on the other hand, that practical skill loses much of its 
beauty and extensive utility which does not originate in 
knowledge. Accordingly, he likens the relation of science 
and art to the relation existing between the parent and 
the child. 1 But Dr. Campbell would include the reflective 
side of art in science. However, he well illustrates the 
common mode of arguing on the question. 

In his essay on Lord Bacon, Lord Macaulay handles 
the question in this vigorous fashion: 

We conceive that the inductive process, like many other pro- 
cesses, is not likely to be better performed merely because men 
know how they perform it. William Tell would not have been 
one whit more likely to cleave the apple if he had known that his 
arrow would describe a parabola under the influence of the attrac- 
tion of the earth. Captain Barclay would not have been more 
likely to walk a thousand miles in a thousand hours, if he had 
known the name and place of every muscle in his legs. Monsieur 
Jourdain probably did not pronounce D and F more correctly 
after he had been apprised that D is pronounced by touching the 
teeth with the end of the tongue, and F by putting the upper teeth 
on the lower lip. We cannot perceive that the study of grammar 
makes the smallest difference in the speech of people who have 
always lived in good society. Not one Londoner in ten thousand 
can lay down the rules for the proper use of will and shall, yet not 
one Londoner in a million ever misplaces his will and shall. 
Dr. Robertson could undoubtedly have written a luminous 
dissertation on the use of those words. Yet even in his latest 
work he sometimes displaced them ludicrously. No man uses 
figures of speech with more propriety because he knows that 
one figure is called a metonymy and another a synecdoche. A 
drayman, in a passion, calls out, ■ 'You are a pretty fellow, ' ' with- 
out suspecting that he is uttering irony, and that irony is one of 

1 Philosophy of Rhetoric . — Introduction. 



102 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

the four primary tropes. The old systems of rhetoric were never 
regarded by the most experienced and discerning judges as of any 
use for the purpose of forming an orator. Ego hanc vim intelligo, 
said Cicero, esse in prceceptis omnibus, non ut ea secuti oratores 
eloquently laudem sint adepti, sed qucz sua sponte homines elo- 
quentes facerent, ea quosdam observasse, atque id egisse, sic esse 
non eloquentiam ex artificio, sed artificium ex eloquentia natum. 
We must own that we entertain the same opinion concerning the 
study of logic which Cicero entertained concerning the study of 
Rhetoric. A man of sense syllogises in celarent and cesare all day 
long without suspecting it; and, though he may not know what 
an ignoratio elenchi is, has no difficulty in exposing it whenever 
he falls in with it; which is likely to be as often as he falls in with 
a Reverend Master of Arts nourished on mode and figure in the 
cloisters of Oxford. Considered merely as an intellectual feat, 
the Organum of Aristotle can scarcely be admired too highly. 
But the more we compare individual with individual, school with 
school, nation with nation, generation with generation, the more 
we lean to the opinion that the knowledge of the theory of logic 
has no tendency whatever to make men good reasoners. 

Like Macaulay's other exaggerations, this one contains 
much truth. He is wholly right as to Tell and Barclay, 
and partly so as to Jourdain; but such analogies are 
too mechanical to apply closely to mental operations. 
As to grammar, there can be no doubt, first, that 
the fundamental law of language is use and wont; or, 
secondly, that the reflective study of language corrects 
errors and tends to form a second language nature. 
As to logic, it is nonsense, as he says in the context, 
to suppose that Aristotle or Bacon thought that he 
was doing anything more than to generalize the mental 
processes with which he dealt, and to lay down rules for 
conducting them. How far these generalizations are 
true, and how far these rules are helpful, are perfectly 
fair questions. Men learn to reason by reasoning, and 
real logic is therefore a far more valuable exercise than 
formal logic; but to say that study of the theory of reason- 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 103 

ing is useless is to commit the same mistake that Macaulay 
falls into in regard to grammar and rhetoric. J. S. Mill, 
a much more competent witness on such a subject, de- 
clares that to nothing was he more indebted for his power 
to think than to the very thorough instruction in the 
school logic that he received from his father. ' ' The first 
intellectual operation in which I arrived at any pro- 
ficiency," he says, " was dissecting a bad argument, and 
finding in what part the fallacy lay: and though what- 
ever capacity of this sort I attained, was due to the fact 
that it was an intellectual exercise in which I was 
most perse veringly drilled by my father, yet it is also true 
that the school logic, and the mental habits acquired in 
studying it, were among the principal instruments of this 
drilling. ' ' 1 Many a man has dated a new mental era from 
the time that he took up the theories of thought, of 
expression, and of conduct. 

But the passage quoted involved assumptions that 
are only half true. We will narrow the ground: Why 
should a teacher bother his head with the physiological 
and psychological facts that underlie education? In effect 
this question has been answered already, but it will be 
well to present the answer more sharply. 

1. The student-teacher will reap the usual disciplinary 
and cultural benefits that follow the study of science. 
These benefits will be all the greater because the subject 
of study relates to the daily work in which the student is 
engaged. The subject of study is not distant and ab- 
stract, but near and concrete. Theory is purged by 
experience; experience is illuminated by theory. He is 
a poor workman indeed, and particularly a teacher, 
that has no interest in the rationale of his work. The 
teacher, and, through the teacher, the pupil, gets the 

1 Autobiography, p. 19. 



104 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

benefit of a stronger and fuller mind. There may 
be cases where scientific studies lead to the poorer 
practice of an art, owing to the practitioner's absorp- 
tion in knowledge as such, but experience shows that 
these are exceptional cases, the rule being just the 
other way. 

2. The teacher enjoys that power of revision and pre- 
vision which only deep knowledge of his work can give, 
and that, satisfaction which can follow only from working 
in the open field in the light of day. Experience has con- 
firmed, time and again, what theory suggests — that the 
practice which is guided solely by habit and routine con- 
stantly tends to narrowness and mechanism. It also con- 
firms the suggestion that the only way to correct this 
tendency when formed, or to prevent its formation, is to 
vitalize practice by uniting it with knowledge. It is per- 
haps true that to the common mind nothing seems less 
vital than theoretical knowledge; but if so it is due, at 
least in great part, to the unfortunate confounding of 
theory with conjecture or hypothesis. The Greek con- 
ception of theory is the true one. eeopca means the in- 
tellectual view of a subject, and deep insight into its 
nature; hence, to adjust practice to theory is to adjust it 
to the facts of the case, and to urge that science should 
guide practice is much the same thing as urging that 
practice should be intelligent. 

3. While the principles of science are few and may be 
studied exhaustively, the problems and cases of the art 
are inexhaustible. An engineer may grasp the princi- 
ples on which the building of bridges depends, but he 
can never anticipate all their applications. He had 
better therefore master his science rather than seek to 
accumulate a great stock of pictures, models, and draw- 
ings of bridges, valuable as these are in their proper place. 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. IO5 

4. The study of teaching as an art also is sometimes 
denounced as useless. But it cannot be denied that, to 
teach, a man must have an idea of what teaching is, and 
some idea of how to do it; and this is knowledge. Even 
M. Jourdain, Macaulay to the contrary, may well have 
received instructions in the handling of his organs of 
speech. 

We live in an age of methods. ' 'Tell us how to do it, ' ' 
"Give us something that we can carry into the school- 
room," is the cry of thousands of teachers. Educational 
journals, and even pedagogical books, are crammed with 
devices and tricks that are elevated to the dignity of 
methods. Hence it should be said, first, that a method 
is good only in so far as it leads quickly and easily to the 
chosen end; and, secondly, that it leads to such an end so 
far, and so far only, as it embodies a valuable idea or 
thought. That is a weak mind which, once in the 
possession of a principle, cannot, at least when reinforced 
by moderate experience, handle applications as they pre- 
sent themselves. 

Doubtless it would be too much to say that the man 
who knows most of the science of painting or sculpture 
will paint the best pictures or make the finest statues. 
Theoretical knowledge cannot take the place of technical 
skill; notwithstanding, the great artists have all had a 
profound insight into the principles underlying their 
work. The teacher will find a firm hold of the principle 
of imitation a much better preparation, in the long run, 
for teaching the language arts than the painful turning of 
the crank of routine or grinding in the mill of formal 
precepts. 

The self-assumed superiority of the so-called ' 'practical 
man' ' over him whom he scornfully calls ' 'the bookman, ' ' 



106 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

consists largely in his freedom from all theories. The fun- 
mental mistake involved in this assumption consists in 
confounding theory with conjecture or assumption. A 
theory is merely a view of certain facts, and if it is 
bad it is because it does violence to the facts through 
omission or otherwise. For one to proclaim himself with- 
out theories is to proclaim himself without ideas. Theories 
precede all actions that spring from purpose. A cook 
cannot make a biscuit, or a blacksmith shoe a horse, 
without a theory; and if, perchance, the wrong theory 
is followed the results are disastrous, as when the 
smith attempts to shoe an ox as he would shoe a horse. 
The fact is, that no man is without his theories. The late 
Professor Bonamy Price, of Oxford, after observing that 
"men at all times have occupied themselves with the 
creation of wealth according to certain rules and ideas, ' ' 
very pertinently remarks: 

No laborious employment can be extensively carried on with- 
out the existence of some notions as to the right way of working, 
and the most fitting methods for attaining the end desired. It is 
a mistake, though a very common one, to suppose that practical 
men, as they are called, are destitute of theory. The exact re- 
verse of this statement is true Practical men swarm with 
theories, none more so They abound in views, in ideas, in rules, 
which they endow with the pompous authority of experience; 
and when new principles are proposed, none are so quick as prac- 
tical men to overwhelm the innovator with an array of the wisdom 
which is to be found in prevalent practice. 

The difference between men is not that some have 
theories while others have none, but that they differ in 
the source and nature of their theories, as Professor Price 
goes on to show. 

The difference which separates the man of science from the 
man of practice does not consist in the presence of general views 
and ideas on one side, and their absence on the other. Both have 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. 107 

views and ideas. The distinction lies in the method by which 
those views have been reached, in the breadth and completeness 
of the investigation pursued, in the rigorous questioning of facts, 
and the careful digestion of the instruction they contain, in the 
coordination and the logical cohesion of the truths established. 1 

The practice of medicine furnishes a good illustration. 
The theories of the quack grow out of his own 
experience and are limited by it; the theories of the 
physician rest upon the research of the medical world. 

There has been much difference of opinion as to method 
and the study of method. Talleyrand declared methods 
to be masters' masters. ' ' The true instruments of the 
sciences, they are to teachers themselves what teachers 
are to their pupils. ' ' Pestalozzi, who never did anything 
methodically, made the method everything, the teacher 
nothing. He even affirmed that a text-book had no value 
except so far as it could be emplo3^ed by a teacher without 
instruction, as well as by one with instruction. M. Corn- 
pay re quotes the proverb, "As is the master so is the 
method," as expressing the true view. 

Three questions present themselves to every intelligent 
teacher, What ? How ? Why ? The first comprehends 
the method to be taught; the second the method to be 
followed ; the third the cause or the reason why this method 
should be followed. These questions are closely con- 
nected, but they are here given in their natural order. The 
what and the how must join hands in the best teaching. 
In elementary schools, method is especially important be- 
cause pupils have small power to arrange or organize mat- 
ter for themselves. In colleges and universities, learned 
scholars may be found who are wasting their own time and 
their pupils' time because they do not know how to teach. 
It is never a good sign therefore to hear a teacher sneer- 

1 Principles of Currency, Lecture I. 



108 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ing at methods. As Bacon said: "A lame man on a 
straight road reaches his destination sooner than a courier 
who misses his way. ' ' 

It is sometimes said that persons who have studied 
teaching professionally often fail as teachers, while others 
who have not so studied it often succeed. While we must 
admit the facts to be as stated, we should be careful not to 
draw from them wrong conclusions. Some persons lack 
native aptitude to teach, just as some others lack aptitude 
to practice medicine or the law. Besides, professional 
study may run on wrong lines. Other persons are rich in 
teaching capacity, and, supplementing their defective train- 
ing by private study, they succeed. Moreover, nothing 
can take the place of actual practice in the schoolroom. 

Defined absolutely, there are three kinds of teachers. 
The mechanical teacher knows nothing of the philosophy 
of education; he has never studied either the human mind 
or educational values; he takes everything on authority, 
and is the slave of tradition, routine, and habit. The em- 
pirical teacher has a somewhat broader range; still he has 
no grasp of educational science or history, and is limited 
by his own observation and experience. The philosophi- 
cal teacher is guided by the broad facts and laws of edu- 
cational science; he is more or less versed in the theory 
and history of education; but all his scientific and his- 
torical knowledge has been vitalized and illuminated by 
his own experience. All good teaching grows out of good 
pedagogical ideas, from whatever source they may be de- 
rived. 

Still another topic to be treated is the order in 
which the two leading courses in pedagogy should be 
taken. Which should come first, the science or the art 
of teaching ? Facts and principles or rules and methods ? 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. IO9 

Something can be said in favor of either mode of pro- 
cedure. 

It may be said that since principles are the causes of 
methods, and since we cannot intelligently study modes 
of doing things unless we understand the things to be 
done, the natural order is from principles to methods. 
And from the standpoint of pure theory this reasoning is 
unanswerable. It would be hard to find a book that reverses 
the order. ' On the other hand it may be said that general 
ideas are deduced from practice; that art is older than sci- 
ence; that it is a great advantage to one studying the science 
of teaching to have had some previous practical knowledge 
of it, and that therefore the practical course should come 
before the theoretical. And this reasoning seems as con- 
clusive as the other. 

Both of these views, when stated in this exclusive way, 
are too narrow. We will suppose that a student who has 
had no experience whatever as a teacher first takes up 
the course in theory. But this student has been a pupil in 
the school; or at least has studied, and has had a teacher; 
he has perhaps read or heard more or less about teaching, 
so that he has a certain acquaintance with the practical 
elements of the subject; or he has, at least, a daily exem- 
plification of the rules of teaching before him in the work 
he is now doing. And still further, the teacher whose 
lectures on the theory of teaching he hears, or the author 
whose books he reads, constantly enforces the principles 
that he presents with illustrations drawn from the art of 
teaching. Or, on the other hand, we will suppose that a stu- 
dent first takes up the practical course. He has, however, 
been a member of a school; at least belongs to one now, 
and can hardly have failed to reflect somewhat on the 
art that he has seen practiced; he has probably seen or 
heard some discussions of educational doctrine; or, these 



IIO STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

two suppositions failing, his teacher of method is con- 
stantly enforcing the methods and rules that he recom- 
mends with arguments drawn from the theory of teach- 
ing. 

It is therefore manifest that the theory and the art of 
teaching cannot be absolutely separated; that they over- 
lap to some degree; and that the professor, in presenting 
the one course, lays the emphasis on theory, while in the 
other he lays it on practice. The fact is that the science 
and the art of teaching, like many other sciences, have 
grown up together. The all-important thing is that the 
mutual dependence of theory and method shall be under- 
stood, and that the student, if he begins with principles, 
shall carry them out into practical rules of teaching; or, 
if he begins with methods, shall thoroughly ground them 
in educational doctrine. In the later stages the question 
of order is more important than in the first stages. Here 
science should ordinarily precede art. In general, it may 
be said, that the man who coined the traditional phrase, 
"Theory and Practice," put the two elements in the 
proper order. He would have made a mistake if he had 
said ' ' Practice and Theory. ' ' 

Finally, what has been said as to the relation of the 
courses in the science and the art of teaching involves a 
moot question that should receive a word or two of com- 
ment. This question relates to the value of the so-called 
model or practice work in connection with the study of 
pedagogical theory and formal art. 

It would be waste of words to emphasize in general the 
value of a practical acquaintance with the elements of an 
art to a person who is engaged in its study, and particu- 
larly if he looks forward to its practice. No matter how 
painstaking the teacher may be — no matter how carefully 



THE SCIENCE AND THE ART OF TEACHING. Ill 

he may illustrate his ideas and lessons — there is still a 
certain abstractness or remoteness from reality, unless the 
pupil has tried, or is permitted to try, his own hand, or 
at least to observe the activities in question. This is, no 
doubt, true of teaching as of the arts generally; and this 
is the reason why model or practice departments are 
found so commonly in normal schools. The admitted 
evils that such schools often engender, as method-grinding 
and self-complacency in the pupils, need not here be dwelt 
upon ; nor will the proper organization and control of such 
schools be made the subject of remark. The only point 
that needs to be made is this, that it is easy to exaggerate 
the value of such practical elements as can be obtained in 
a practice school under the ordinary conditions, and also 
easy to expend unnecessary commiseration upon the 
pedagogical pupil who does not enjoy such advantages. 
As urged above, every student of teaching, no matter 
whether he has taught or not, has been at school; he has 
been a pupil, has mingled with pupils, and is a pupil now; 
he has had teachers and now has one or more. In these ways 
he has accumulated a fund of practical knowledge that will 
go a considerable distance, although by no means the 
whole way, towards compensating him for his lack of 
practical experience, past or present. More than this — 
he is constantly surrounded by minds old and young; the 
commerce of life compels him more or less to observe the 
workings of these minds, and, what is still more to the 
purpose, he has a mind himself which serves him as a 
pedagogical laboratory in the same way that it serves him 
as a psychological laboratory. He is by no means with- 
out an illuminating knowledge of the matters with w T hich 
he is dealing. In fact, it is his own personal experience 
of such matters that is to interpret for him through apper- 
ception his observations of the minds of others. Ac- 



112 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

cordmgly, to call a practice school a "laboratory" in any 
scientific sense of that term, or to say that children stand 
to teaching pedagogy in the same relation that plants 
stand to the teaching of botany, is to fall into a mis- 
take that is now unhappily not uncommon. This mistake 
is to overstrain an analogy, and to do violence to facts. 



CALVINISM" AND -AVERAGING" IN 
EDUCATION. 1 




HEN the call to this meeting reached me, I 
was watching the ripples in the educational 
journals caused by one of the boldest and 
frankest educational utterances that I have 
read for many a day, viz.: the short address made by 
President Eliot, of Harvard University, at the annual 
dinner of the Schoolmasters' Club of Boston, at the end 
of October; and it occurred to me that I might render 
you a small service by making it the subject of my own 
discourse. President Eliot's abilities, position, policy, 
and courage of his opinions always give importance to 
what he says on educational matters. Perhaps I have 
not made the happiest selection of a theme; but you will 
at least remember that in the commonwealth of American 
education we have no tribunal, as a bench of judges, to 
pass authoritatively on questions; no digests of opinions 
or reports of cases that settle causes and prevent further 
argument. On the contrary, causes are always open to 
him who chooses to argue them. No doubt we make 
foolish experiments in consequence; but these are not so 
costly in the end as it would be to close causes to discus- 
sion, and to settle questions by referring them to registered 
wisdom. Moreover, the spirit of our large educational 

1 An Address delivered before the Michigan State Teachers' 
Association, Lansing, December, 1885. 

113 



114 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

gatherings is so catholic, and the range of ability, culture, 
and experience represented in them so considerable, that 
almost any topic, even if it touches education only in- 
directly, is pretty sure to awaken interest if fairly well 
presented. 

The character of President Eliot's thinking on educa- 
tion, and the policy that he has pursued at Harvard, are 
so well understood that, in the beginning, I need only say 
this in general — each distinct point in his address is an 
outcropping of his favorite principles of election and com- 
prehension. In discussing these points, I shall often pass 
beyond the limits of what he has said, to consider related 
questions. This is the paragraph in which he states 
and combats what he calls the " Calvinistic theory'' of 
education: 

At a meeting of teachers which I attended last week, a dis- 
tinguished man burst out with a completely irrelevant statement 
that nothing was good for training that was not hard. Now, I 
want to say that the view which ascribes usefulness to mental 
exercise only when it is repulsive and distasteful to the scholar, 
needing a dead-lift of the will, is to my thinking the absolute 
opposite of the truth with regard to mental training. No subject 
is good for the training of a child four years old, or twelve, or 
eighteen, in which the child or youth is not capable of achieving 
something, capable even of decided success, and of winning that 
enjoyment and satisfaction which come with achievement and 
success. If we would divide subjects into profitable and unprofit- 
able we must, I believe, always put in the profitable class those 
subjects which the boy enjoys, and in the unprofitable class those 
subjects for which he has no capacity and in pursuit of which he 
gets no enjoyment. A subject is good for a child precisely in pro- 
portion to his liking for it, or in other words to his taste and 
capacity for it. 1 

1 The extracts are made from an article by President Eliot in 
The Popular Educator, November, 1885. This article and the 
after-dinner speech were the same in substance. 



" CALVINISM" AND "AVERAGING" IN EDUCATION. 115 

At the outset we should boldly mark one capital dis- 
tinction that much current writing and talking on educa- 
tional and kindred topics tend to confuse, viz. : Work is 
not play. Ingenious essayists and lecturers sometimes 
almost delude us into believing, at least for the moment, 
that they are, or may be made, the same thing. They 
both involve activity, work commonly more than play; 
but they differ in the ends to which the activity is di- 
rected and in the mental attitude of those who put it 
forth. Work is an act or a series of acts in the line of 
one's occupation or duty; play is resting from such acts. 
The synonyms of the one word are "labor," "toil," 
"employment;" of the other, "pleasure," "amuse- 
ment," "diversion." Work is girding up the powers 
for serious effort; play is their relaxation, at least their 
diversion from ordinary pursuits. Aristotle says there must 
be business for the sake of leisure. 1 Both work and play 
appear in a well-ordered life; both have disciplinaty 
value; both are related, though in quite different ways, 
to education, but neither one can be made to answer the 
purposes of the other. 

In educating children the attempt has sometimes been 
made to put work in the place of play, and sometimes 
the attempt to put play in the place of work; and it 
would be hard to say which has led to the greater failure. 
The first attempt is the blunder of practical teachers only; 
the second is the blunder both of teachers and of writers 
on educational theory. So sober a man as John Locke 
not only proposed to combine instruction and sport, but 
said nothing like work should be laid on children; the 
great Ube and skill of a teacher in the case of small chil- 
dren being, he affirmed, to make all as easy as he can. 2 

1 The Politics, vii. 14, 13, Translated by Jowett. 

8 See Thoughts Concerning Education, \ 129, 148-155. 



Il6 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

No doubt play comes before work in the order of de- 
velopment; no doubt children learn many useful 
things in their sports; no doubt the kindergarten has a 
message for the primary teacher: but failure will in the 
end attend every attempt to make the schoolroom a play- 
room and the course of study a series of games. Kven 
in a school where the aim is to teach only through amuse- 
ments, children divide the exercises set for them into two 
classes, making work of some and play of others. 1 More- 
over, if it were possible to clothe all work in the habit of 
play, it would not answer the ends of complete discipline. 
John Maynard did not think it play when, in smoke and 
flame, he stood at his wheel until burnt to a crisp. The 
sentry does not think it play as, in cold and storm, he 
paces his weary beat at midnight, keeping watch over the 
sleeping army that has been given to him in trust. The 
nurse who, in hospital or home, watches alone over her 
feverish and delirious patient in the small hours, does not 
think it play. Nor, again, does the pilot, the sentry, or the 
nurse acquire his fortitude and devotion in spinning tops, 
flying kites, or playing lawn-tennis. To be sure tops and 
kites and tennis have their place, but the ability to gird 
up the powers of the body and the mind for supreme ef- 
forts, or even for common efforts, comes from a different 
regimen. It was in a thorough school that St. Paul learned 
to say, " For necessity is laid upon me." 

It may be replied that men sometimes find their play- 
spells in severe exertion of a particular kind, as solving 
problems in mathematics or physics. Such declarations 
are often to be understood rhetorically. Still it must be 
said that long application to given things may produce a 

1 "The plays of children should not be systematized; they should 
give the individual an opportunity for the distinct development of 
faculty." — Radestock: Habit i?i Education. 



" CALVINISM" AND ''AVERAGING" IN EDUCATION. II7 

second nature that speaks a different voice from the first 
nature. Work may become a disease. Lord Chief Justice 
Ellenborough sat on the bench until he said the greatest 
pleasure of his life was to hear Follett, then a young bar- 
rister, argue a point of law. Again, great interest in a 
subject, and great enthusiasm in its pursuit, make it 
attractive and pleasant. We read that ( 'J ac °D served 
seven years for Rachel and they seemed to him but a few 
days, for the love he had to her." But plain, unso- 
phisticated common sense holds work and play antithetical. 
Even so devoted and resolute a lover as Jacob would have 
preferred to win his bride in an easier way than serving 
seven years as a herdsman. 

Now, I do charge President Eliot with confusing work 
and play. Such confusion is not necessarily involved in 
anything that he says; but so much such confusion exists, 
that a bold delineation of the two kingdoms seemed a 
proper prelude to taking up his real point. 

The President tells us that studies should be made in- 
teresting and easy; school, pleasant and attractive. This 
is indeed very valuable advice. The unpleasant associa- 
tions that still cling around the words ' 'pedagogue' ' and 
"master" are survivals of that period in educational 
history when it was common to make school studies ex- 
ceedingly hard, school discipline exceedingly severe, and 
school life exceedingly forbidding. The Calvinistic theory 
was then in its glory. What is left of this regimen is now 
passing away so rapidly that we need to give much more 
attention to what is taking its place than we do to hasten- 
ing its passage. 

The child has a spontaneous nature that should be 
harnessed to studies and to the whole work of life. Auto- 
matic attention is that state of the mind in which its energy 
is given to a thing from some native affinity or attraction; 



Il8 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

volitional attention, that state in which its energy is given 
by an act of choice. The development of volitional atten- 
tion is one of the highest aims of discipline. Now, in 
training the child the spontaneous attention must be 
rallied to the support of the volitional, which is weak or 
rather does not at first exist at all; but as time goes on the 
volitional attention should grow and become more and more 
independent of the spontaneous. Humor has been likened 
to the lever by means of which we raise great weights 
with a small force. l,ove and enthusiasm are also power- 
ful motors. There is a large suggestion for the teacher 
in the fact that a little boy who complains bitterly of the 
weariness of walking will, when put astride of his grand- 
father's cane, and told that it is a horse, scamper away 
forgetful of his own bitter complaints. But somewhat of 
life consists in walking when one is weary,- and no boy is 
fitted for life who cannot walk. The child should indeed 
be led to the hard by the way of the easy; but the man 
has no real training or character who cannot, on due 
occasion, collect his powers to do a multitude of things 
that he considers hard and disagreeable. The spontane- 
ous powers keep us alive in infancy, and death comes 
when they wholly fail us; but the highest end of educa- 
tion is the fullest development of the judgment, the moral 
sense, and the will. Hitch the spontaneous forces to 
your wagon by all means; but if you have no other horses, 
do not be surprised when you find that you drive an un- 
certain team. 

Drawing nearer to President Eliot, it is not true that 
nothing is good for training unless it is hard; but it is 
true that no training is complete which does not involve 
much severe and vigorous labor. It is not true that mental 
exercise is useful only when it is repulsive and distasteful, 



u 



CALVINISM " AND " AVERAGING " IN EDUCATION. 1 1 9 



needing a dead-lift of the will; but it is true that a good 
many such lifts have to be made, and that the child must 
be got ready for them by lifting. It is true that no sub- 
ject is good for training in which the child is not 
capable of achieving something, and of enjoying the 
achievement; but it is not true that a subject is always 
good for him in the long run in proportion to his present 
capacity and liking for it. Sometimes it is the case that 
a child, or older pupil, who has small capacity for a sub- 
ject, and finds little pleasure in its pursuit, develops, 
through application and study, great capacity and pleas- 
ure. After they have passed the rudiments of learning, 
children should not be kept long at subjects for which, 
under skillful teaching, they have a positive aversion; 
nor, on the other hand, should the choice of their studies 
be left to their caprices and whims. Things should not 
be made hard that are by nature easy. There is no reason 
in blocking the way to grammatical analysis with a cart- 
load of nomenclature; or in weighing down the solution 
of a simple example in arithmetic with a ponderous 
formula. There is no excuse for retaining in text-books 
the artificial distinctions and antiquated methods often 
found in them. Arithmetics, for example, should not be 
museums for hanging up on exhibition "applications" 
that have disappeared from business, if indeed they were 
ever known there. But there is a difference between real 
life and training after all. In real life it is best to accom- 
plish results with the smallest expenditure of power and in 
the quickest way consistent with thoroughness; but in the 
nursery and the school this is not always the case. The 
child that can be carried quickly and easily across the 
room, must learn to walk across it. Pupils must learn 
algebraic methods by first solving problems that they can 
more easily solve by arithmetical methods. Astronomers 



120 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

do not now, like Sir Isaac Newton, use the Greek 
geometry in making their computations; 1 but the math- 
ematical student needs the discipline and logical forms of 
the Greek geometry nevertheless. Moreover, we only 
destroy the child morally by keeping him forever shut up 
in a glass case; we should rather equip him with sound 
principles, good habits, healthful appetites and desires, 
pure affections, and right purposes, and then allow him 
to be subjected to trial and testing. Further, trial and 
testing are essential to the production of that very equip- 
ment. In a word, my whole contention is that the child 
must be brought, progressively of course, to measure his 
full powers with the labors and difficulties of life. 

My reason for dwelling so long on this point is my con- 
viction that nowhere along the long line of educational 
discussion is there greater need of clear ideas. We forget 
sometimes that the end of teaching is not to place certain 
information in the mind of the pupil in the easiest way, 
but rather to see that it is retained and assimilated, and 
that the mind and character are strengthened by the 
process. Partly in this forgetfulness, and partly in our 
haste to hurry children along, lies the explanation of some 
of the characteristic features of our schools. Books are 
not taken away from children, but they are not given the 
chance that they need to study them; while teachers, with 
their " new educations," " natural methods," and " oral 

1 "Speaking of the ancient geometry used by Newton, Dr. Whe- 
well has said: 'The ponderous instrument of synthesis, so effective 
in his hands, has never since been grasped by any one who could 
use it for such purposes; and we gaze at it with admiring curi- 
osity, as on some gigantic implement of war which stands idle 
among the memorials of ancient days, and makes us wonder what 
manner of man he was who could wield as a weapon what we can 
hardly lift as a burden.' " — Draper: Intellectual Development oj 
Europe, p. 529, 



"CALVINISM" AND " AVERAGING " IN EDUCATION. 121 

instruction, ' ' fill the children up with knowledge and at 
the same time destroy mental character. Perhaps I should 
remark that this is true only in a relative sense. It is 
quite generally asserted by high school teachers who have 
had a lengthened experience, for example, that their pupils 
are not the independent workers that they were fifteen or 
twenty years ago. An old lady familiarly called ' 'Grand- 
ma ' ' was a patient in a hospital for the insane over which 
a friend of mine presided as superintendent. She reso- 
lutely refused to swallow food, and for two full years fed 
herself only once in the natural way. She would place 
the feeding pipe in her throat, and hold the bowl of milk or 
broth in her hands, while the attendant threw the liquid 
into her stomach with a pump. One day the doctor said: 
''Grandma, don't you think it would be better if you 
would eat this food yourself?" " Oh, no," she answered, 
"this is so much easier!" With all his mistakes in 
educational matters, John Stuart Mill certainly understood 
the great educational transition of his times when he wrote: 

I do not believe that boys can be induced to apply themselves 
with vigor, and what is so much more difficult, perseverance, to 
dry and irksome studies, by the sole force of persuasion and soft 
words. Much must be done, and much must be learned, by chil- 
dren, for which rigid discipline, and known liability to punish- 
ment, are indispensable as means. It is, no doubt, a very lauda- 
ble effort in modern teaching, to render as much as possible of 
what the young are required to learn, easy and interesting to them. 
But when this principle is pushed to the length of not requiring 
them to learn anything but what has been made easy and interest- 
ing, one of the chief objects of education is sacrificed. I rejoice 
in the decline of the old brutal and tyrannical system of teach- 
ing, which, however, did succeed in enforcing habits of applica- 
tion; but the new, as it seems to me, is training up a race 
of men who will be incapable of doing anything which is dis- 
agreeable to them. * 

1 Autobiography, pp. 52-53. 



122 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Mr. Mill even said: "A pupil from whom nothing is 
ever demanded which he cannot do, never does all he can. ' ' 

In his second paragraph President Eliot gives his views 
of another division of the subject: 

This idea, I know, if carried out thoroughly, runs directly 
counter to another very common idea — namely, that there is a 
considerable number of subjects which everybody ought to know. 
Now, the longer I live, the greater experience and wider observa- 
tion I have, the more I settle to the conviction that there is no one 
thing that a liberally educated man must know. In arithmetic, 
for example, what v stumbling blocks to children are least common 
multiple and greatest common divisor; but we have all discovered 
that common people have no use for either of these matters. And 
so on throughout much of school education. It is not at all nec- 
essary for everybody to know what air is made of, where the River 
Charles rises, how the pump draws water, or the names of the 
stars, or of any of the kings of Egypt. Not one of these things is 
in the slightest degree essential to a liberal education. Hence the 
notion that there is a certain number of subjects which everybody 
should know, ought never to be allowed to interfere with or coun- 
teract the general principle that the best training for every indi- 
vidual lies in the pursuit of those subjects for which he is best fitted 
and which he enjoys. 

Unfortunately, this language is not as clear as could be 
desired. In one sentence the President denies "that 
there is a considerable number of subjects which every- 
body ought to know, ' ' thereby apparently admitting by 
implication that there are some such subjects; and in the 
next sentence he affirms ' ' that there is no one thing that 
a liberally educated man must know. ' ' The denial and 
the admission can be harmonized only by holding that 
the term " thing " applies to a single fact or object, and 
is not the same asa " subject " or branch of knowledge. 
But we are cut off from making this distinction by the 
last sentence, where what has been affirmed of ' ' thing ' ' 



"CALVINISM" AND "AVERAGING" IN EDUCATION. 1 23 

is affirmed of "subject." Apparently, then, the Presi- 
dent of Harvard desires us to understand him in the most 
absolute sense; there is no one thing or subject which a lib- 
erally educated man need know. This is a surrender of 
the three R's, unless we are to suppose that these are in- 
struments or methods for learning things and subjects, 
and not such themselves. 

One's view of the whole paragraph will depend some- 
what upon the sense that he attaches to the expression 
" a liberally educated man," a topic that I set aside for 
the present. No one can fairly claim that such a man 
must know the elements of the air, the source of 
Charles River, the action of a pump, the names of the 
stars, or the names of the kings of Egypt. But the real 
question is this: What is a liberally educated man's 
relation to the great departments of knowledge to which 
these facts belong — to chemistry, geography, physics, 
astronomy, and history? Admit, for the sake of argument, 
' ' that the best training for every individual lies in the 
pursuit of those subjects for which he is best fitted," 
provided we can only find that out ; but since it is a fact 
that special talents do not ordinarily declare themselves 
at the age of ten or twelve years, how are we going to 
make that discovery ? The boy of those ages is quite 
apt to have a stock of whims and notions of his own; 
moreover, what he enjoys depends largely upon his 
associations and habits; and we cannot relegate his studies 
to the court of notion and enjoyment. 

So much for Calvinism. L,et us now hear the President 
on averaging and uniformity. 

There is another principle which we should bear in mind, 
though it runs counter to generally accepted ideas, viz: That 
uniformity in intellectual training is never to be regarded as an 



124 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

advantage, but as an evil from which we cannot completely 
escape. We have lately heard a great deal about " keeping step " 
as a valuable part of public-school training; but I do not know a 
more unfortunate figure to use with regard to education. Even 
in military movements, if troops want to get anywhere they 
never keep step. A large school is almost necessarily a kind of 
averaging machine. But we should always bear in mind that 
though this averaging may be in some measure necessary, it is a 
necessary evil. All should admit that it would be an ineffable loss 
to mankind if the few great men were averaged with the millions 
of common people, — if by the averaging process the world had 
lost such men as Faraday and Agassiz, Hamilton and Webster, 
Gladstone and Cavour. But do we equally well understand that 
when ten bright, promising children are averaged with ninety 
slow, inert, ordinary children, a very serious loss is inflicted, not 
only upon those ten, but upon the community in which the one 
hundred children are to grow up ? There is a serious and prob- 
ably an irreparable loss caused by the averaging of the ten with 
the ninety children. Thererore I say that uniformity in education 
all along the line is an evil which we should always be endeavor- 
ing to counteract, by picking out the brighter and better children, 
and helping them on by every means in our power. 

No other paragraph in the address is so exasperating 
to public-school teachers as this one, and no other is so 
deserving of their attention. Putting aside our resent- 
ment at being talked to in this manner, we should candidly 
inquire what there is in this matter of uniformity and 
averaging. 

In a sense a large public school is ' ' a kind of averaging 
machine." But the world is full of such machines, and 
we need not be over-afraid of them. A national literature, 
no matter how rich and varied, is an averaging machine. 
It tends to produce a certain mental homogeneity, a certain 
type of culture that is more or less distinct from all other 
cultures. The American is not reared on the literature 
of Italy or Persia, and would not be an American if he 
were. The Christian Church, in the broadest historical 



"CALVINISM'' AND " AVERAGING " IN EDUCATION. 1^5 

sense, is an averaging machine; and so, in a much closer 
sense, are the state churches of Europe and the Christian 
denominations of America. One does not need to be a 
theologian to trace the line of delimitation separating the 
Christian Church from all other churches, as the Jewish, 
the Mohammedan, or the Buddhist. The Christian 
denominations rest upon certain doctrinal uniformities 
and certain spiritual cultures, which uniformities and 
cultures they tend powerfully to perpetuate. Non- 
conformity is the loose-fitting name of a multitude of 
British sects; but it nevertheless marks off some very 
definite beliefs or non-beliefs which those sects hold in 
common. Colleges and universities are averaging 
machines; their function being to provide society with 
liberally educated men, who have something in common 
even when the name is held in a sense loose enough to please 
President Eliot. Republican government and absolute 
monarchy are averaging machines, each tending to pro- 
duce its own type of citizen or subject. Nay, civil society 
itself, the very civilization of which we boast, is an 
averaging machine; it is plainly divided from barbarous 
or savage society, and tends to certain uniform results. 
Certainly in this broad sense, large public schools, and 
small public schools, and schools of all kinds are averag- 
ing machines. Moreover, they should be such ma- 
chines. The name may offend us by its suggestion 
of mechanical rather than vital or organic processes, 
but we need not hesitate to admit the fact. Hence 
if President Eliot speaks absolutely when he sa} r s 
that uniformity in intellectual training is never an 
advantage, and that averaging is a necessary evil, I can- 
not agree with him. Probably, however, he does not 
speak in that way. So far, then, there is no room for 
a quarrel. 



126 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

But this is neither the kind of averaging nor the kind 
of uniformity that President Eliot means. He has in his 
mind a process that ignores the individuality of children, 
kills originality, rounding off the sharp knobs of genius 
and character, and thereby accomplishes two things — 
turning out a type of tamely uniform men and women, 
and losing to the world its Faradays and Agassizes, its 
Hamiltons and Websters, its Gladstones and Cavours. I 
do not share the fear that there is great danger of the 
potential great men of the future being spoiled in this 
way, but there is such a thing as over-averaging. Mr. 
Bagehot said civilization consists of two elements, custom 
and change, legality and progress. * ' L,aw, rigid, defi- 
nite, concise law, is the primary want of early mankind. " 
This is the "cake of custom," or "the preservative 
habit," with which civil society everywhere begins. 
Then come progress and variety; "getting out of a 
fixed law," " breaking the cake of custom," "breaking 
through the preservative habit and reaching something 
better. ' ' * Both theory and history prove that the second 
of these steps is much the more difficult of the two. Asia 
is full of arrested civilizations. Witness China, which 
once had a promising civilization, but which for thou- 
sands of years has stood still, wholly unable to break the 
tough cake of custom that antiquity baked. The aver- 
aging machine has there done its perfect work. We talk 
of the "average American," having in mind a certain 
vague type of man, and not venturing to name as such 
any individual in the throng who jostle us on the street; 
but in Pekin, if I understand the matter rightly, you can 
safely point to almost any passer-by with the words, 
"That is the average Chinaman." Once more, there 
may be a valuable suggestion in the fact that the Chinese 

1 Physics and Politics, pp. 21, 27, 53. 



"CALVINISM" AND "AVERAGING" IN EDUCATION. 127 

averaging machine is in the hands of the schoolmaster; 
in no other country in the world have the teacher, the 
school, and literary studies been so powerful in moulding 
the national character and life. 

It is this excess of uniformity — this over-averaging — that 
President Eliot complains of, and that we all need to watch 
with fear and trembling. There is a certain danger of its 
appearance in schools of all kinds; other things being equal, 
more danger in large schools than in small ones, and in 
systems of schools than in single schools. Many teachers 
do over- emphasize— and the majority of teachers are more 
or less likely to over- emphasize — keeping step. To com- 
pare the public schools with other schools might be thought 
invidious, and to speak in quantitative terms of any school 
is impossible; but I am free to say, for one, that President 
Eliot has pointed out one spot where public-school men 
need to keep the danger signal all the time flying. 

Men offer to our observation a great variety of talents 
and tastes. In his late address at Johns Hopkins Univer- 
sity, Archdeacon Farrar said: 

The minds of men differ radically. Some men, like my friend 
the late Dean Stanley, are interested in the nature and thought of 
men; others breathe most freely in the regions of the abstract. 
Charles Darwin said that at school he had learned nothing, with 
the exception of that which he had taught himself by private ex- 
periments in chemistry; and when the head master discovered 
him, instead of encouraging him, he reproached him before all 
the form with being &pocco currente, which he thought a dread- 
ful name. St. Bernard is so dead to outer impressions that he 
travels all day along L,ake Geneva, and then asks where the lake 
is; while Linnaeus is so sensitive to the beauties of nature that, 
when he beholds a promontory standing boldly forth and teeming 
with beauty, he cannot help falling upon his knees and thanking 
God for such a world. 

What educational problems these examples suggest! 
But every man of reading can readily parallel them, even 



128 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

if he cannot state them in as choice language. Sir Walter 
Scott took small interest in the school studies, and was 
looked upon with little favor by the masters; but he had a 
passion for the antiquities, history, and minstrelsy of Scot- 
land, and finally became the great chivalric poet and his- 
torical romancer of the century. You remember the stories 
of Darwin and Sir Humphrey Davy. But a much com- 
moner case is such as this: A boy who does nothing in 
school but make trouble has a taste for drawing and 
mechanical contrivance; he spends the time that the 
teacher wants him to bestow on geography and grammar 
in making pictures and toy machinery, and at last blos- 
soms out, to the surprise of everybody, an architect or 
an inventor. But the variety of character is greater than 
the variety of intellect. The sensibility and the will pre- 
sent to the educator more problems and more difficult 
ones than the understanding. Children's minds have 
been compared to combination locks; if you have the 
"combination," you can enter at once; if you have not, 
no pounding on the door will give you entrance. Some- 
times the combination is simple and easy, and then again 
it is complex and difficult. 

Now, our problem is to adapt the schools to this variety 
of mind and character. Averaging of some sort begins at 
once. One hard thing to manage is the course of study; 
the work assigned in the grades must not be measured by 
the ability of the brightest, nor again of the dullest, 
scholars. The problem confronts us again in the exami- 
nations and promotions. Then the teacher question 
brings it up in a still more trying form. Some teachers 
can rise and fall through two or three octaves, some 
through one octave, some are confined to a single note. 
In government and moral control it is even worse, since 
the average teacher has less power to discipline and mould 



" CALVINISM " AND " AVERAGING " IN EDUCATION. 129 

character than she has to instruct. One teacher reports a 
pupil stubborn; another says he is perfectly manageable. 
One teacher soothes a boy who is bristling like the fretful 
porcupine; another ruffles him and makes him more fret- 
ful. In some schools you will always find more or less 
irritation and friction; troublesome boys who pass into 
other schools disappear from sight like icebergs drifting 
towards the torrid zone. We have difficulty in account- 
ing for these differences in teachers. Even the most skill- 
ful analysts of character fail us. They mention ' ' good 
sense," "sympathy," and several other common quali- 
ties, and then pass off into vagueness — " native tact, " 
"subtle influence," and "indefinable quality." Most 
unfortunately, where the teacher should be fullest of re- 
sources the most vicious averaging is done. Again, 
women are more skillful than men in finding the mind 
and heart combinations of small children, and this is why 
they make the best primary teachers. 

I am familiar with the manner in which the regulation 
schoolmaster puts aside such examples as those just pre- 
sented. He says they are "exceptional," and declares, 
what is true enough as a rule, that the boys and girls who 
do well in school do well in other places; but the question 
arises whether the child that cannot go at the common 
pace, but has a pace of his own — the boy who is separate 
and apart, and is therefore called "queer," or "odd," 
or "strange" — receives the attention that is his due. 
Should such a boy as Walter Scott, or Charles Darwin, 
or Humphrey Davy appear in the schools of Detroit, 
Chicago, or Cleveland, would he find any room, or would 
he be driven out by the established regimen ? I shall 
not answer my own question, but will say that the schools 
sometimes seem to present a case of arrested develop- 
ment. The graded-school movement has done great 



130 Studies in education. 

things for education; it has brought system and order out 
of chaos; it has created custom and legality, but the 
question of individual adaptation and progress has not 
been fully solved. The cake of custom has been baked, 
but not fully broken. This is my excuse for offering 
some remarks on this point of a more definitely practical 
character. 

1. President Eliot does not exaggerate the value to the 
world of its great men; nor is his solicitude for the ten 
brightest children in a hundred misplaced. He was 
right when he wrote in "The Atlantic Monthly" ten 
years ago: 

We Americans are so used to weighing multitudes and being 
ruled by majorities that we are apt to underrate the potential 
influence of individuals. Yet we know that Agassiz's word about 
a fossil fish justly outweighed the opinion of the whole human 
race besides; that Von Moltke is worth great armies to Germany; 
that a few pages of poetry about slavery and freedom by Longfel- 
low, Lowell, and Whittier have had the profouudest effect upon 
the public fortunes of this country during the past thirty years; 
that the religions of the world have not been the combined work 
of multitudes, but have been accepted from individuals. We 
must not be led by our averages and our majorities to forget that 
one life maybe more precious than other millions; that one heroic 
character, one splendid genius, may well be worth more to hu- 
manity than multitudes of common men. 1 

But it does not seem possible to make very full provi 
sion for the highest abilities in schools of any kind. Ths 
fact is, the men who have them move in an orbit, and 
with an impetus, of their own. In discussing the scale 
of merit among men who obtain mathematical honors at 
the University of Cambridge, Mr. Galton speaks of the 
enormous differences of power that the examinations reveal. 

ijune, 1875, p. 713. 



" CALVINISM" AND "AVERAGING" IN EDUCATION. 13I 

One year the senior wrangler obtained 9,422 marks, while 
the man who stood at the bottom of the same honor list 
obtained only 309. Galton states the ratio of abilities as 
30 or 32 to 1; that is, the senior wrangler is able to 
grapple with subjects thirty or thirty-two times as diffi- 
cult as the man who stands lowest on the list. And 
yet he insists that the examinations do not give the best 
men a fair chance, owing to the large amount of time that 
is taken up in the mechanical labor of writing. 1 

Now, how are these extraordinary men to be educated? 
I can see but one possible answer — they must, for the 
most part, get what they need in extra-school work. 
What they need is great teachers who can guide them in 
their studies. This is what Dr. Brunnow did for Watson 
at Ann Arbor. It is not practicable to bring the bright- 
est pupils in a public-school grade together in classes by 
themselves; the different classes of pupils within the 
grade must, for the time, work together. But when we 
succeed in gearing the public library to the public school, 
the best pupils can pour their surplus power into litera- 
ture. It may be replied that the best pupils are apt to be 
the nervous and precocious ones, who should not be 
crowded, which is true in a measure; but there are other 
pupils of superior ability and strength who can do more 
than the allotted measure of work. 

2. A good teacher can do a great deal of this differ- 
ential work within the school. Here, I fear, teachers do 
not always understand their business. At the beginning 
of a term a class is graded, and the teacher, perhaps, 
thinks that she should keep it graded. Not at all; it is 
her duty to ungrade the school as quickly and thoroughly 
as possible. Even classes may be very easy to handle, 
but they indicate average teaching. English fox-hunters 

1 Hereditary Genius, p. 20. 



I32 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

think it a great merit in a pack of hounds to run in so 
close a body that a blanket will cover them, but schools 
are not, or at least should not be, ' 'packs of children. ' ' By 
ungrading a school I do not mean that the bright children 
are always to be promoted out of the class, though that is 
sometimes best: I rather mean that extra work may be 
furnished in school or out of school to those who are able 
and anxious to do it. This would, in reality, be putting 
two or three courses in the one course: imperia in im- 
perio. 

3. To put elective studies in lower-grade schools I 
think impracticable. The studies of those grades are 
fundamental in character as well as in name, and the 
children, with the exceptions soon to be made, must be 
held to them. But you will often find boys who have no 
taste and no ability for grammar, for example, but are 
good readers, good arithmeticians, good geographers, and 
are full of general information into the bargain. To re- 
fuse promotion to such a boy, particularly if his stay in 
school will be short, is an injustice. The same is true of 
the girl who succeeds in everything but arithmetic. But 
I shall be told that there are indolent pupils, and pupils 
who have dislikes for particular studies, and that these 
will also ask for promotion when they fail. This difficulty 
is not an imaginary one; but I reply that I would pro- 
mote none on this score who have not also been successful 
in nearly all the studies. Moreover, the refusal to do 
justice to one class of pupils because another and a differ- 
ent class will make trouble, while it must sometimes be 
done perhaps, is most emphatically a vicious averaging 
process. Again, there are pupils who never master the 
work of any grade beyond the fourth or fifth; they absorb 
so much of a subject and never absorb any more; and, 
when the point of saturation is reached, they should be 



" CALVINISM " AND " AVERAGING " IN EDUCATION. 1 33 

moved along. Of course such pupils cannot be cairied 
through the schools and graduated; fortunately for the 
management, however, they generally disappear before 
graduation day comes. Perhaps I shall be asked, "How 
much would you yield at these various points?" That 
question cannot be answered in quantitative terms. What 
I mean is, I would individualize the cases and deal with 
them as they arise. 

But one side of uniformity and averaging President 
Eliot did not touch on. It was left to Professor Harris, 
of Andover, at that famous dinner, to discuss the subject 
of order. He is reported as having said: " Order is not 
heaven's first law; order is the law of a small mind — of an 
imitative, mechanical mind. Order, as a law, reminds 
one of a Dutch garden, of rooms in a hotel with furniture 
arranged exactl)^ alike. There is a vast distance between 
order and disorder where variety may appear. ' ' We need 
not weigh these words one by one, or as a whole; but it is 
desirable to think the important subject ot order out to 
the end. 

The common saying that order is not an end but a 
means is perfectly true. The same may be said of educa- 
tion itself, though in a different sense. Order is proxi- 
mate to education, education to life. A certain kind and 
amount of order is essential to intellectual education; there 
must be attention and application to the objects of stud}- . 
Migratory tribes never become highly civilized; bodies of 
men must, as a whole, become fixed and permanent be- 
fore they can really enter on the march of mental and 
moral progress. A similar condition attends the educa- 
tion of the individual pupil. Then order has an important 
moral bearing. Regularity, punctuality, industry, and 
obedience, all requiring much self-control, are prominent 



134 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

features of public schools as now organized and conducted; 
and how important they are as moral virtues, no reading 
and thinking man has an excuse for not understanding, 
since Dr. W. T. Harris gave them this rank and dignity, 
first in one of his St. Louis reports, and afterwards in a 
paper read to the National Council of Education in 1883. * 
And this is one side of the case as fully as I need to pre- 
sent it; now for the per contra. 

Nothing in school management is easier than to overdo 
order. Particularly is this true in the cases of small 
children of American ancestry, with a tendency to ner- 
vousness. Every man of sense and observation will admit 
this the moment he reflects on their restless manner, their 
animal spirits, and their small power of physical self- 
control. 2 Such children must have frequent physical ex- 
ercises while the school hours are passing; also a good 
deal of liberty when engaged in work at their seats. They 
cannot be ' ' trussed' ' like so many chickens. The old- 
fashioned tests of school excellence, ' 'you can hear a pin 
fall," or "a watch tick," are most unnatural, absurd, and 
tyrannical: human nature rebels against such repression. 
Reasonable order in the school-room, for the most part, 
must be secured indirectly; it must come as the result of 
keen interest in the work, and close application to it. 
What is sometimes called ' 'good order' ' does not always 
imply either interest in studies or a good school, since it 

1 The National Council of Education, 1883. 

2 Dr. G. Stanley Hall gives this bit of description: "I have 
seen a file of one hundred and fifty small German boys just as they 
marched out of the school house at noon, almost unbroken a 
quarter of a mile away; and I observed several hundred little girls 
at the Victoria School in Berlin, during an outdoor recess, and did 
not see one run a step or do anything a lady ought not to have 
done, although they were allowed perfect freedom." — Aspects of 
German Culture, p. 306. 



" CALVINISM " AND " AVERAGING " IN EDUCATION. 135 

may be secured by extreme repression; but interest and 
application are pretty certain to lead to good order. In 
other words, order should be largely spontaneous. In the 
long run, that teacher will best succeed in securing it who 
says little about it. Even grown persons who are con- 
sciously trying to keep still find it difficult to do so. How 
hard many find it to sit for a photograph ! The boy whose 
business is to be quiet is likely to make a great deal of 
noise while about it. Moreover, a positive direction 
or order to keep still, given to any assemblage, tends 
to provoke nervous and muscular movements. Great 
audiences are as still as death, not when the orator is 
descanting on order and stillness, but when he loses him- 
self and them in his subject. Hence attempts to secure 
order should not be thrust into the faces of children. 
Wendell Phillips tells an anecdote of a judge who 
said to the crier of the court, " Mr. Crier, }^ou are 
the noisiest man in court, with your everlasting shout of 
'silence !' " So it is in some schools; the teacher with her 
sharp cries, "attention!" "position!" causes, directly 
and indirectly, more nervousness and confusion than all 
the scholars put together. I have heard children say, ' ' I 
cannot keep still in that school." But while the order of 
school should be mostly spontaneous, and therefore 
unconscious, I know full well that often the teacher must 
take a pupil, and even a school, in hand, and bring about 
the desired result by direct means. 

But there is another view of the subject, second to no 
other in importance. A good teacher must possess two 
great qualities; the power to govern or manage, and the 
power to instruct and develop the child. That the second 
of these is the greater power, is as clear as that the first is 
often more highly valued. Unfortunately, there are teach- 



136 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ers of good abilities, excellent character, fine education, 
apt to teach, and of admirable influence on mind and 
heart, who are not gifted as managers. Some are even 
weak. In time they may establish their influence in the 
school, but they cannot walk into the room and command 
order with a nod or a wave of the hand. Still more un- 
fortunately, there are other teachers who have large power 
to manage, but are very poor and weak in intellectual 
and moral qualities. These teachers, often coarse and 
ruling by mere animal dominancy, can nod and wave 
children into enforced subjection, but they succeed indif- 
ferently in the real ends for which the school exists. I 
am fully aware that a certain amount of control is essen- 
tial to good instruction, and that a teacher who cannot 
govern, no matter how admirable a person she may be, is 
a failure; but it has often seemed to me unfortunate that, 
nine times in ten, the visitor, or superintendent on visit- 
ing a school, especially if the teacher be a new one, is first 
struck by the order and afterwards by the instruction. 
Then five or ten minutes often suffices the experienced 
observer to tell whether a school is managed or not, while 
repeated visits, some of them protracted ones, are neces- 
sary to ascertain the character of the instruction along all 
the lines of school work. Particularly is this true in the 
upper grades, where the work is widely differentiated. 
These theoretical views, together with some observation, 
lead me to two conclusions which, however, are but one 
at root: That the superintendent, the schoolboard, and 
even the whole community, are pretty certain to over- 
value the managing teacher as compared with the 
developing teacher; and that, generally, too much atten- 
tion is given to order as compared with instruction. 
And still a teacher must govern to a degree or she cannot 
develop. 



IN EDUCATION. 1 37 

This group of topics, which has detained us so long, 
may be dismissed with these additional remarks: That 
the public school system of a large city, with its grades, 
courses of study, teachers, supervisors, etc. , is necessarily 
complicated, and more or less machine-like; that it may 
easily be made a repressive, oppressive, and deadening 
machine; and that educational bigots and sciolists will be 
sure to prostitute it to these ends. No other schools call 
for more intelligent teachers and supervision. It was once 
said of a great national church that abounded in mechani- 
cal elements: "When once this vast organization, with 
its minuteness of ritual, ceased to be constantly vivified 
by the breath of prophesy often passing over it, like a 
divine whirlwind, to shake its entire fabric, its tendency 
was to petrify into immobility. ' ' Something like this will 
happen to the public schools almost the very hour that 
they cease to feel the vivifying breath of public discussion. 

One thing more and I am done. More than anything 
else in the world, education is a matter of men and women. 
No matter what school topic we raise, it soon passes into 
the concrete. Courses of study and methods of instruc- 
tion lead quickly up to the question, "Who are to do the 
teaching and supervising?" All contemplated reforms 
resolve themselves into the teacher-question. Iyike other 
instruments of vast power, the public-school system 
may be greatly abused; and whether it is or not, will 
depend, in the first place, mainly on the intelligence, 
education, and devotion of teachers and supervisors. To 
aid in solving this problem, such associations as yours 
exist and such meetings as the present one are held. I 
can leave with you no larger hope than this — that in your 
efforts to solve the problem you may meet your fullest 
expectations. 




VI 

PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR 
EDUCATION. 1 

HE FORUM for December, 1892, contained 
one of those vigorous articles that President 
Eliot, of Harvard University, occasionally 
contributes to current educational literature. 
Beginning with the averment that there is serious and 
general disappointment at the results of popular education 
up to this date, although many countries have now system- 
atically provided such education for all children for more 
than two generations at great cost and with a good deal 
of enthusiasm, he proceeds to sum up with a strong 
hand the current criticisms of universal education as a 
cure for ancient wrongs and evils. The following sum- 
mary will give a fair view of the scope and content of this 
arraignment: 

(1) General education does not promote general con- 
tentment, and so fails to secure public happiness. (2) 
People in general are hardly more reasonable in the con- 
duct of life than they were before free schools, popular 
colleges, and the cheap printing press existed, as is shown 
by the currency of obscene books and pictures and low 
novels, by the number and success of quacks and impos- 
tors, by the general acceptance of popular sophisms and 
fallacies, and by the cyclones of popular folly that beat 
upon the ship of state. (3) Lawless violence breaks out 

1 A paper read before the Principals' Association of the city of 
Chicago, February, 1893. 

133 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 39 

just as it did before there were common schools; the Jews 
are still ostracized in Germany and in New York, and are 
robbed and driven into exile in Russia. (4) New tyran- 
nies are constantly arising, the tyrant being some- 
times a majority of voters, sometimes a combina- 
tion of owners, contractors, or workmen, sometimes 
the walking delegate. Popular elections are conducted 
in an irrational manner, votes are still purchasable, 
and the average voter is an intense partisan. (5) 
Society does not tend toward a greater equality of con- 
ditions; the distinctions between rich and poor are 
intensified, and education does not procure for the wage- 
earner exemption from exhausting toil. (6) The rich 
man refuses to accept responsibility with his wealth ; he 
gives or withholds employment as he pleases, and, irre- 
spective of education, is just as selfish and luxurious in 
his habits as was his predecessor in former centuries 
who could not write his name. (7) War is more destruc- 
tive than ever; the nineteenth century is the bloodiest of 
all the centuries; the world has never before seen such 
man-slaying machines as are the great armies that Europe 
is now supporting, while the American Republic is 
expending more money on pensions than France or 
Germany expends on her army. (8) The conditions of 
employment have not been made more humane and com- 
fortable; almost all services and industries are organized 
on the brutal principle of the dismissal of the employed 
by the employer on the briefest notice, and the tenure of 
employment during efficiency and good behavior is the 
privilege of an insignificant minority of well-to-do people. 

A moment's reflection suffices to show that this form- 
idable indictment includes much more than the existing 
education, — that it is, in fact, an indictment of what we 



140 STUDIES IN EDUCATION, 

familiarly call modern progress. President Eliot does 
not endorse all the counts that have been enumerated; he 
spreads them over four pages of " The Forum,' and then 
tells us that they exaggerate existing evils and leave out 
of sight great improvements in social conditions which 
the last two generations have seen. But, unfortu- 
nately, he leaves us in doubt as to the extent of such 
exaggeration. Still, he devotes a page or more to 
stating some of the beneficent changes that have been 
effected in the social economy in the last seventy 
years. He mentions the mitigation of human misieries 
resulting from the reformation of penal codes and 
prisons, the institution of reformatories and hospitals, 
and the abolition of piracy and slavery. He says that sav- 
ings' banks and other similar institutions have promoted 
habits of industry and frugality; that the condition of 
most laboring classes in society has been ameliorated in 
respect to earnings, hours of labor, lodgings, food, and 
clothing, while means of education for their children have 
been multiplied and family and school discipline have 
been mitigated, and all sorts of abuses and cruelties have 
been checked. Further, almost all business is conducted 
nowadays on faith, which is based on the inherent moral 
qualities of the race that general education reinforces and 
fortifies; freedom of intercourse has been amazingly 
developed; progress has been made toward a genuine 
unity of spirit among classes and peoples ; and while war 
has not ceased, soldiers are more intelligent than they once 
were. The industries and trades also require more intel- 
ligence in work people than heretofore. He adds that 
while popular education has not effected all these changes, 
it has contributed to them all. 

How far he considers the social improvements and 
ameliorations that he enumerates a set-off to the criticisms 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 141 

on the schools that he marshals, President Eliot does not 
say. While it is manifestly impossible, in such a case, 
to speak in quantitative terms, it must be clear to every 
reflecting mind that they are a set-off to a very great 
extent. For example, the particular facts stated in 
regard to the improved condition of work people largely 
neutralize the general statements previously made about 
the relations of capital and labor and of the extremes 
of society. And here it is pertinent to say that if 
President Eliot had been content to submit a summary of 
the criticisms on the current education that he thinks 
true and important, with reasons for his opinions, instead 
of resorting to the cumbrous method of the courts of law — 
first filing an indictment and then a partial answer — he 
would have rendered the cause which he wishes to pro- 
mote a much more valuable service, especially as he dis- 
misses the case without any summing-up whatever. Had 
he done this, he would have found his task more difficult. 
He would have found it necessary carefully to consider 
what popular education may justly be expected to accom- 
plish for society, — a phase of the general subject that, at 
the present time, is second in importance to no other 
phase that can be mentioned. That a multitude of people, 
if not indeed a large majority, entertain exaggerated ideas 
of the function, and so of the usefulness, of popular edu- 
cation, he appears to perceive; for he says, in the wisest 
paragraph of his whole article, that it is somewhat com- 
forting, while brooding over the educational failure, to 
recall that society had already' had similar disappoint- 
ments, accompanying the remark with two well-chosen 
examples. Unity of religious belief, instead of bringing 
the ideal social state that many persons expected it to 
bring, brought rather persecutions and desolating wars 
of religion; while popular government has come far short 



142 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

of realizing the almost infinite possibilities that demo- 
cratic optimists believed it contained at the time when 
modern society was first entering into the enchanted land 
of Liberty , Equality , and Fraternity . Than these , he could 
not have drawn more impressive lessons pertinent to the 
question from the records of social experience; they 
deserve more emphasis than he gives them; for, if the 
Christian Church and democratic government are to be 
measured by the high standards that many enthusiastic 
souls have set up for them, they are more disheartening 
failures than popular education, even when it is treated 
in the same manner. The New Testament teaches that 
the Christian religion came down from above, and that it 
will thoroughly furnish men unto all good works; and 
nothing is easier for a man who accepts this view than to 
conclude that its general introduction into the world 
would certainly usher in the millennium, provided only 
he overlooks the fact stated by St. Paul : ' ' For we have 
this treasure in earthen vessels." Then put the govern- 
ment of the City of New York or of the City of Chicago 
alongside of what the democratic prophets were saying 
about democracy a century ago: The democratic theory is 
that government is proximate to all the great interests of 
human life; that men generally, or at least a great majority 
of men, will actively bestir themselves to secure good gov- 
ernment whenever they can make their power felt, and 
that, therefore, nothing is wanting to secure such govern- 
ment but the creation of the required political conditions. 
Well, in the United States we have now been trying the 
experiment for more than a hundred years under the most 
favorable conditions that ever existed; and we have been 
compelled to learn, as Dr. Eliot puts it, that "universal 
suffrage is not a panacea for social ills, but simply the 
most expedient way to enlist the interest and support of 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 43 

us all in the government of us all. ' ' That is, we have 
learned that democratic government is not a perpetual 
motion. Democracy is the doctrine of averages applied 
to public affairs; and there is no reason to expect that, in 
the long run, it will produce government that is superior 
to the average intelligence or morality of the nation. The 
belief of the most advanced peoples now is, that elemen- 
tary instruction should be made universal, irrespective of 
sex, class, or condition, and that the means of secondary 
and higher education should also be liberally furnished; 
some of these peoples have now been acting on this theory 
for a long time; and, considering the part that knowledge 
and intellectual power are commonly supposed to play in 
the economy of human life, it was natural that most men 
should antecendently think that the final result would be 
a social transformation. Although we have not yet reached 
the goal of universal education, we have gone far enough 
towards it tc see that it will not prove a panacea for social 
ills, but that it is simply the most effective means yet 
devised for diffusing intelligence, and so for partially free- 
ing men and society from the dominion of folly, ignorance, 
and passion, thus making life less bestial and more human 
than it was before. It was never reasonable to expect 
that it would cure all our political sicknesses and correct 
all our social disorders. 

The panacea tendency in human nature, arising from 
the force of conservative habit, is very strong. "Each 
age," says Mr. Mackenzie Wallace, " has its peculiar so- 
cial and political panaceas. One generation puts its trust 
in religion, another in philanthropy, a third in written con- 
stitutions, a fourth in universal suffrage, a fifth in popular 
education. In the Epoch of the Restoration, as it is called, 
the favorite panacea was secret political association." 1 

1 Russia, p. 393. 



144 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The public school is the panacea in which we Amer- 
icans have been putting our trust, and we are now 
waking up to the fact that it is not doing the work that 
we have confidently expected it to do. This is a very- 
painful, but also a very important revelation, and it is very 
desirable that it shall soon be followed by the further dis- 
covery that it can never be made to do all that work. So- 
ciety, having produced at great cost a system of public in- 
struction, seems determined to thrust upon it burdens it can- 
not carry. Most of our Catholic brethren, for example, will 
not use the public school, save as a dernier resort, because 
it does not teach dogmatic religion: as though such a 
thing were possible in a democratic country! Some peo- 
ple blame the school because it does not make the pupils, 
or at least most of them, moral: as though the school could 
take the place of the family and the church ! Some per- 
sons say the school does not fit pupils for practical life, 
and President Eliot charges that it does not equip them 
for dealing with the economical and financial problems 
that vex the country. And yet on this point he himself 
once wrote: " Many persons hold that the Republic can be 
saved by primary education, but the most despotic gov- 
ernment in the world — that of Germany — is that where 
primary education is most widespread." He seems, 
however, immediately to have forgotten Germany, for he 
proceeds to say: "Despots can reconcile themselves to 
universal primary education, but cannot overcome the in- 
fluence of universal education of a higher type. Well 
conducted superior education — the training in knowledge, 
in writing, and speaking, of the natural leaders of the 
people — is the need of the country. ' ' 

It is worth observing that even men of cultivation tend 
to invest certain human institutions with very exalted at- 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 145 

tributes. The church, the government, and the schools 
of learning are spoken of as though they were something 
superior to general society; something partially or wholly 
separate and apart from it; and as though they should, 
therefore, be free, in large measure, from the weaknesses 
and vices that belong to the mass of mankind . A moment ' s 
reflection should teach men of even average education that 
clothing human organizations of any kind with a highly 
superior intelligence, wisdom, and skill when, by reason of 
numbers, they are in close touch with the great body of 
society, is arrant folly. For brief periods governments have 
sometimes risen far above the level of the humanity in the 
midst of which they have existed, as in the persons of 
Charlemagne and Alfred, but these are the exceptions 
that prove the rule. Of all the uplifting powers that have 
ever acted upon the course of civilization, the most benefi- 
cent have been the mind and the heart of Jesus of Naza- 
reth; for almost nineteen centuries they have been in- 
structing and inspiring the most progressive races of men; 
and yet even the tyro in historical studies knows that from 
the moment when the Christian Church first embraced a 
large section of human society to this day, it has responded 
more or less completely to the evil influences and tenden- 
cies of both time and country. What an interval there is 
between the barbaric church of Abyssinia and the purest 
forms of American Christianity ! 

Probably it will be said that these analogies do not hold 
in the case of elementary schools. The teacher, we 
are told, works upon plastic material; he is the potter, 
the child the clay, and so he is answerable for the 
vessel, whether it be one of honor or of dishonor. Even 
philosophers, to express their estimate of the educa- 
tional function, have used language that cannot be en- 
dorsed. 



146 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Leibnitz. — "Entrust me with education, and in iess 
than a century I will change the face of Europe. ' ' 

Descartes. — "Sound understanding is the most widely 
diffused thing in all the world, and all differences be- 
tween mind and mind spring from the fact that we con- 
duct our thoughts over different routes. ' ' 

Locke. — "Out of one hundred men, more than ninety 
are good or bad, useful or harmful to society, owing to 
the education they have received. ' ' 

Helvetius. — "All men are born equal and with equal 
faculties, and education alone produces a difference be- 
tween them. ' ' 1 

It is not proposed to traverse these opinions, except to 
state two things. The first is, that they belong to the 
rhetoric and not the science of education. It is, no 
doubt, wise for the teacher, and probably for others also, 
to magnify the educational function; but to magnify it to 
the extent of practically denying that heredity is a great 
factor in human life, not to speak of equalizing the facul- 
ties of men, is to set at nought the stubbornest facts 
and also to invite defeat in the pedagogical field. The 
second observation is, that school education is quite lim- 
ited as compared with the whole field of human culture. 
No matter how good schools may become, they will never 
supply to the mass of men the major part of the knowl- 
edge and discipline that is necessary for a well-ordered 
life. 

It is worth while to make more diligent inquiry con- 
cerning the relations of the school to the other agencies 
of human cultivation. Of all writers known to me, Dr. 
W. T. Harris has best answered this question. ' ' The 
four cardinal institutions of human civilization by which 

1 See Ribot: Heredity, p. 347. 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 147 

man realizes his ideal and educates the individual into 
that ideal," he says, "are the family, civil society, the 
state, and the church. ' ' Each of these institutions has a 
special phase of education all its own, whose functions 
cannot be performed by another." As a matter of course, 
these institutions somewhat overlap and supplement one 
another. The survey is complete, but the school has not 
been found; it is not a cardinal institution of society, as 
is shown by the fact that men so long did without it. 
Dr. Harris thus defines the province of the school: — 

Education in its most obvious signification as the transform- 
ing influence which the great social institutions— family, civil 
society, nation, and church — exert on the individual in order to 
convert him from a savage into a civilized being, reinforces its 
more general educational instrumentalities by a special institution, 
the school. 

The school is established for the training of youth morally and 
intellectually in a direct manner by the influence of the teacher. 
The school forms a supplementary special institution whose place 
or order is found between the family and civil society. It comes 
partly after the first stage — that of family nurture — and partly 
contemporary with it, and usually precedes the era of the educa- 
tion of civil society, namely for an independent vocation, work or 
business. * 

To assist the cardinal institutions of civilization is the 
sphere and function of the school. It is one of the numer- 
ous products of division of labor, effected long after the 
beginnings of human cultivation; it has very materially 
lightened the work of the cardinal institutions, and has 
performed much of that work in a far better manner than it 
had been done, or now could be done, without it; but all 
attempts, whether arising from a decline of interest in 

1 See the Report on Pedagogics made to the National Council 
of Education at Madison, July, 1884, found in The Proceedings 
of the Council and in The Proceedings of the National Educational 
Association for that year. 



148 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

those institutions, or from enthusiasm for schools, to 
thrust this secondary agent into their places, and to demand 
that it shall do all, or nearly all, of the educational work, 
must necessarily result in hopeless failure and bitter dis- 
appointment. It is hard for an observing man to resist the 
conclusion that society has been tending strongly in that 
direction. There is reason to think, in particular, that 
certain well-known causes— such as the development of 
specialization in all directions, growing love of ease and 
enjoyment on the part of the well-to-do classes, and increas- 
ing competition in business — are materially weakening the 
family in more ways than one. At all events, it can never 
be impertinent to observe that this primordial institution 
cannot devolve its educational functions and duties upon 
churches and schools, no matter how good the churches 
and the schools may be. 

Let it not be said that these fears are groundless. Pro- 
fessor L,aurie, of the University of Edinburgh, says in a 
late article: " Mothers of the wealthier classes will tell us 
that they have no time for the training of their children; 
the demands of society are too exacting to admit of it. 
The day will come, if the race is to make progress, when 
it will be the other way about, and society will have to 
content itself with taking a second place, while the duties 
of the nursery and the parlor will make good their prior 
claim." 

It is not my purpose to belittle the offices of the 
teacher and of the schools; rightly considered, those offices 
are of very great importance. Neither do I wish to 
depreciate what the teacher and school have done for 
society; they have been of incalculable benefit. Even in 
the field of morals, where there is so much criticism, it is 
my firm belief that the school is performing its- duties 
quite as well as the family or the church. Take the 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 149 

children of a large city for example; where else do tens 
of thousands of them learn such valuable lessons in punc- 
tuality, regularity, obedience, industry, cleanliness, de- 
cency of appearance and behavior, regard for the rights 
and feelings of others, and respect for law and order as in 
the public schools? Nay, more; where else do many of 
them learn any valuable lessons on these subjects ? Nor do 
I wish to turn aside from the schools the force of merited 
criticism; there can be no question that they stand greatly 
in need of improvement. Least of all do I wish to imply 
that Dr. Eliot shares the highly extravagant ideas con- 
cerning the office of the school that are so current, and 
yet even his ideas are extravagant. My purpose is rather 
to reduce the popular estimate of the school as an engine 
of individual and social improvement to something like 
just measure. It is high time that we should have a 
fuller discussion than we have ever yet had of the limi- 
tations of the teacher inhering in the abilities of children, 
in the facts of social life, and particularly in the nature 
and office of the school itself. 

Dr. Eliot presents in numbered order the main opera- 
tions of the mind that systematic education should develop 
in an individual in order to increase his general intelli- 
gence and train his reasoning power. The first of these 
processes or operations is observation; the alert, intense, 
accurate use of all the senses. The next operation is the 
function of making a correct record of things observed. 
Then comes the development of the faculty of drawing 
correct inferences from recorded observations, the faculty 
of grouping or coordinating and comparing facts, and of 
drawing from them sound and just conclusions. Fourthly, 
education should cultivate the power of expressing one's 
thoughts clearly, concisely, and cogently. Observing 



150 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

accurately, recording correctly, comparing, grouping, and 
inferring justly, and expressing cogently the result of 
these mental operations — these are the things in which a 
man must be trained in youth, if his judgment and rea- 
soning power are to be systematically developed. Eet it 
be observed that the emphasis is here placed where it 
rightly belongs; on discipline or power and not on infor- 
mation or attainments in knowledge. Then the four 
points are well chosen; to develop the powers mentioned 
is the primary end to be promoted by schools and teachers, 
and we may justly call a school or a school system that 
falls far short of its duty in these particulars a failure. 
Still, we must not overlook the ideas of relation and 
measure. The question arises, How much can the ele- 
mentary school do to teach the pupil to observe, to record, 
to infer, and to express ? Of course, the answer can be 
only an approximate one, but even that President Eliot 
does not give, save indirectly. He rather reviews the 
staples of instruction in the elementary schools, and pro- 
nounces the results meagre and unsatisfactory. The 
acquisition of the art of reading is mostly a matter of 
memory, he says; the same must be said of writing; 
as to English spelling, it is altogether a matter of memory; 
geography, as commonly taught, means committing to 
memory a mass of curiously uninteresting and unimpor- 
tant facts, while arithmetic is the least remunerative sub- 
ject in elementary education as now conducted. This is 
certainly a discouraging inventory. Drawing, manual 
training, kindergarten work, and lessons in elementary 
science are dismissed with observing that they are recent 
additions to the school course, that they occupy but a 
small part of the whole school time, and have not yet 
taken full effect on the men and women now at work in 
the world. No attempt is made to estimate the value of 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 151 

these observational studies. Not a word is said about the 
language, the composition, the grammar, or the history; 
the last two he would, no doubt, dispose of much as he 
disposes of geography and arithmetic. 

Now it must be admitted that the elementary teachers 
of the country fail to get out of the school studies the 
disciplinary value there is in them. Reading, geography, 
and history may be particularly mentioned. Still, it must 
be said that President Eliot's handling of the studies that 
he mentions does not do justice to- the work that is now 
accomplished, apparently because his standard is too high. 
Speaking of the whole educational system from top to 
bottom, he says "the art of expressing one's thoughts 
clearly and vigorously in the mother tongue receives com- 
paratively little attention. " I do not undertake to say 
how the young men who now enter college compare with 
those who entered it a generation ago, or how the more 
cultivated classes now and then compare in respect to 
ability to write the English language; but there can be 
no question that the mass of the people write English 
better at present than they ever did before. 

The judgment pronounced upon secondary and higher 
education is not more favorable than that upon elementary 
education. Here a large part of the time is given to the 
study of languages, which, as usually conducted, does 
little for the pupil but develop his memory. It is a 
rare teacher of languages, we are told, who makes such 
teaching the vehicle of much thinking. Nor do the 
other studies exercise any of the mental faculties vigor- 
ously but the memory. In the higher institutions . the 
cultivation of the memory also predominates; the observe 
ing, inferring, and reasoning powers are subordinated. 
How far these criticisms are true is a matter of opinion, 
but the common opinion of educated men is no doubt con- 



152 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

siderably more favorable than Dr. Eliot's. He lays deserved 
stress upon the proposition that the educational value of a 
subject depends very largely upon the way in which it is 
taught. "No amount of memoriter study of language, 
and no attainments in arithmetic,'' he says, "will protect 
a man or woman— except imperfectly through a certain 
indirect cultivation of general intelligence — from succumb- 
ing to the first plausible delusion or sophism he or she 
may encounter. No amount of such studies will protect 
one from believing in astrology, or theosophy, or free 
silver, or strikes, or boycotts, or in the persecution of 
Jews or of Mormons, or the violent exclusion of non- 
union men from employment- ' ' This is all as true as true 
can be, and it brings us at once to the questions: What 
changes should be made in our curricula and methods of 
teaching in order to get a fuller development of the 
powers of judgment and reasoning? How can the school 
better equip the people of the land to deal with the dan- 
gerous sophisms and fallacies that afflict society? We 
anxiously turn Dr. Eliot's pages to catch his answer to 
these important questions. His formal prescription em- 
braces seven items. 

(1.) We must make practice in thinking a constant 
object of instruction from infancy to adult age, no matter 
what may be the subject of instruction. (2.) Wise ex- 
tension can be given to the few observational studies al- 
ready introduced into the early school grades. (3.) More 
time can be given to the practice of descriptive and argu- 
mentative writing. (4.) Those subjects that give practice 
in the classification of facts and in induction must be 
taught in schools, not from books, but by laboratory 
methods. (5.) Not only should the time devoted to his- 
torical studies for older pupils be much increased , but the 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 53 

method of teaching them should be so changed as to 
discipline the logical powers of the mind. (6.) In the 
higher part of the system of public instruction, political 
economy and sociology should receive much more atten- 
tion than at present, and should be taught as disci- 
plinary subjects. (7.) Concrete argumentation should 
be taught in schools by taking up and analyzing argu- 
ments that have actually determined the course of trade, 
industries, and public affairs, such as Burke's Speech 
on the Conciliation of America and Webster's Reply to 
Hayne. 

The first remark that this prescription calls out is, that 
for the last twenty years our pedagogical writers and lec- 
turers, almost to a man, have laid constant stress upon 
the cultivation of the powers of observation, judgment, 
and inference. "Do not cram but develop," has been 
more thoroughly dinned into the ears of teachers than any 
other single pedagogical precept that can be named, and 
if little is now accomplished in the schools but to cram 
the memory the educational outlook is not encouraging. 
President Eliot's remarks might lead one to assume that, 
relatively, the pupils of the schools are now full of empir- 
ical knowledge, — real store-houses of information — which 
every person familiar with the facts knows is not the case. 
The school children of the land do not know any more 
than they ought to know. 

The second observation is, that the current belittling 
of the memory is largely unreasonable and mischievous. 
To exalt the logical faculties is all right; to belittle the 
faculties of retention and reproduction is all wrong. It is 
not impertinent to say that if a man has a fine memory, 
there is no reason why he should be ashamed of it. Pro- 
fessor James may be quoted on the broader aspect of this 
subject. 



*54 



STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 



No one probably was ever effective on a voluminous scale 
without a high degree of this physiological retentiveness. In the 
practical as in the theoretic life, the man whose acquisitions stick 
is the man who is always achieving and advancing; whilst his 
neighbors, spending most of their time in relearning what they 
once knew but have forgotten, simply hold their own. A Charle- 
magne, a Luther, a Leibnitz, a Walter Scott — any example, in 
short, of your quarto or folio editions of mankind — must needs 
have amazing retentiveness of the purely physiological sort. Men 
without this retentiveness may excel in the quality of their work 
at this point or at that, but will never do such mighty sums cf it, 
or be influential contemporaneously on such a scale. 1 

This point having been duly guarded, there is no reason 
why we should not accept President Eliot's prescription 
and thank him for it. Still the question arises, How far 
are his ideas practical ? 

In the first place, all those suggestions that relate ex- 
clusively to the real higher institutious of learning can be 
fully carried out. It is very desirable to qualify the lib- 
erally educated men of the country to do sounder think- 
ing than they now do on political, social, and economical 
subjects. At present, as is well known, students graduate 
from college, excellent linguists, chemists, or mathema- 
ticians it may be, whose opinions on such matters are little 
better than childish. More than this even, the same is true 
of many scientific specialists and other professional men. 
Still more difficult is the question that relates to the ele- 
mentary and the high schools. Relatively, but few Amer- 
ican youths go beyond the high school, or even beyond the 
higher elementary grades; and unless Dr. Eliot's prescrip- 
tion will materially affect these schools beneficially it is not 
going to do much directly for the masses of the people. 

Here we must, in the first place, rule out the last three 
items of the prescription. Even secondary pupils cannot 

^Psychology, Vol. I, p. 660. 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 55 

carry on the higher historical studies; they can do 
nothing with sociology or political economy, save in the 
most empirical fashion, and while they will admire the 
declamatory passages of great speeches, like Burke's and 
Webster's, they cannot follow the argumentation. 

In the second place, much the larger share of the im- 
provement to be effected in these schools must come from 
better teaching of the old and tried subjects. In the early 
grades, and indeed to the end of the grades, great stress 
must be laid on the memory. Only in this way will 
the child retain what he is taught and what he learns 
for himself, and thus accumulate a store of material 
upon which he can exercise his powers of compar- 
ison, judgment, and inference. All the higher mental 
operations are dependent upon retention and reproduc- 
tion. Stimulation of the logical faculties Should be- 
gin with the first grade, and should become more and more 
energetic as the pupil ascends the grades. A great deal of 
work must be done in school that involves but little in- 
telligence, as to acquire the mechanical elements of reading, 
spelling, and writing; but such studies as reading, compo- 
sition, geography, history, mathematics, elementary 
sciences, literature, and language can be made disciplinary. 
Language as the substance of thought is more important 
than language as the form of thought, or as a fine art. 
The teacher of Cicero should require his pupils to follow 
the sequence of the argument, as well as to observe the 
grammatical construction of the language in which it is 
clothed. Besides, while pupils in the upper grades and 
in high schools can no more carry one of Webster's con- 
stitutional arguments than Milo could have shouldered 
the ox the first morning that he lifted the calf, they 
can deal with inferior but still useful forms of argumen- 
tation. 



156 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Whether the so-called observational studies, such as 
drawing, manual training, and elementary science, should 
receive considerably more attention than at present, I 
am less anxious to inquire than I am to examine an 
assumption underlying the affirmative reply that is often 
given to it. This is the assumption that the mental 
forces, like light, heat, and electricity, are convertible 
one into another; or, perhaps it were better to say, that 
mental power is fully generic. 

Power or skill resulting from any kind of exercise may 
be considered under two aspects, one specific and one 
generic. The strength that a gymnast accumulates in 
bowling is all usable in bowling, but it is only partially 
and secondarily usable in running or in rowing. The 
power engendered by solving mathematical problems can 
all be employed in carrying on mathematical work, but 
only a part of it is available in studying language or his- 
tory. The extent to which power created by such exer- 
cise is convertible — that is, the extent to which it is gen- 
eric — depends largely upon the degree of congruity ex- 
isting between the first and second forms of activity. 
Plainly, if a man's powers were fully convertible they 
would all be equal. Such, briefly stated, is a law that is 
not sufficiently regarded either in educational practice or 
in educational discussion. This law President Eliot 
sometimes seems to have distinctly in mind. He says, 
for example, that no amount of memoriter study will 
directly arm a man against astrology, theosophy, free silver, 
strikes, boycotts, or the persecution of Jews and Mormons. 
' ' One is fortified, ' ' he goes on to say, ' ' against the ac- 
ceptance of unusual propositions only by skill in determin- 
ing facts through observation and experience, by practice 
in comparing facts or groups of facts, and by the unvary- 
ing habit of questioning and verifying allegations, and of 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 57 

distinguishing between the facts and inferences from the 
facts, and a true cause and an antecedent cause. ' ' While 
this is excellent, he should have added that skill acquired 
by observing facts of one kind and by drawing inferences 
from them, is not wholly convertible into skill in dealing 
with a different kind of facts. Of course, observation, com- 
parison, and inference are much better than memory in 
such case. -But again, he sometimes seems wholly to 
lose sight of the law of specific and generic results. He 
says the savage has abundant practice in observation, for 
he gets his daily food only by the keenest exercise of his 
senses. It may be said with equal truth that the savage's 
boasted power of observation is a specialized and there- 
fore a limited power; introduced into L,ondon, the savage 
is far less observant than a cockney, and left to himself 
would soon starve to death. Again, we are told ' ' that it 
does not matter what subject the child studies, so that he 
studies something thoroughly in an observational method. 
If the method be right, it does not matter among the 
numerous subjects well fitted to develop this important 
faculty which he chooses or which be chosen for him. ' ' 
This may be true as respects method; but there is no 
method of observation that can take the place of personal 
contact with the facts themselves. While precision, pa- 
tience, and verification are of general value, it would be 
very far from true to say that good scientific observers, in 
their several fields, are necessarily good observers in 
respect to politics, manners and customs, and business 
affairs; or vice versa. It is indeed a question how far 
habits of observation formed in the fields of nature serve a 
man in the fields of humanity. And so it is with the 
logical faculties. There is no method or form of observation 
or reasoning that a man can acquire and then effectively 
turn, like a swivel gun, in any direction that he pleases. 



I58 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

We are therefore led to ask, How far can the studies 
now taught in schools be made directly to qualify pupils 
to deal with the highly special and concrete delusions and 
fallacies that President Eliot enumerates? First, how- 
ever, let it be said that if any one doubts the validity of 
the conclusion that has been reached in regard to the spe- 
cific and the generic, he should ponder such questions as 
these: Are mathematicians less liable to fall into popular 
delusions and sophisms than philologists ? Do chemists 
enjoy any special immunity from fiat money and free sil- 
ver? Are physicists, botanists, geologists, and astrono- 
mers particularly skillful in reaching sound conclusions in 
regard to strikes and boycotts ? Has the persecution of the 
Jews in Germany been confined to men taught in the hu- 
manistic gymnasia ? Have students trained in American 
schools of science shown special aptitude in dealing with 
the Mormon question? In general, are those persons 
who cultivate the observational studies particularly expert 
in escaping the snares that bad politicians and other 
charlatans set for our feet ? No disparagement of scien- 
tific studies or of scientific methods lurks in these ques- 
tions; their sole purpose is to show that the relation of 
these studies to social affairs, outside of special lines, is 
less intimate than many people assert. 

Only practice in observing, comparing, and judging 
human facts — facts into which freedom, and so probabil- 
ity, enter — can fit a man in an eminent degree for deal- 
ing with social delusions and fallacies. The school studies 
that lie proximate to such experience as this in the field 
of real life, fall into the historical and philosophical 
groups. The student who has rightly studied history, 
sociology, and political economy should be able to deal 
effectively with social and political questions; but even 
these studies will not confer the nower to do so if they are 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 59 

pursued in a merely formal and abstract manner. The. 
studies that lie outside of these groups can equip the citi- 
zen for social and political action only imperfectly, through 
a certain indirect cultivation of general intelligence and 
logical acumen. Some studies will do more in this direc- 
tion, others less; but the more closely they relate to hu- 
manity, the more they will do. This is why literature 
properly taught is so valuable as a discipline. 

Shall we then enlarge the kindergarten work, the draw- 
ing, and the manual training in the public schools ? 
While much can be said in favor of the proposition on 
some grounds, I fear that little can be said on the ground 
that these studies will quickly bring the free-silver proph- 
ets to confusion, or that they will afford increased secu- 
rity for the Jews in Berlin or for the Mormons in Utah. 
Iyet the man who disputes this judgment show how han- 
dling the ' ' gifts, ' ' or doubling up pieces of colored paper 
in a kindergarten, or how drawing, or handling ax, 
hammer, and saw in a manual training school, lightens 
his pathway when he walks up to the ballot-box on elec- 
tion day. Are union workmen in paper-box factories more 
regardful of the rights of non-union workmen than union 
men in other industries ? Do men who handle tools never 
strike or engage in boycotts? Are engineers who use 
drawing instruments panoplied against astrologers and 
fortune-tellers ? And do they never accept absurdities in 
regard to the origin of the Knglish system of weights and 
measures or of the Great Pyramid ? 

Then it should be remarked that superior mental ma- 
turity and superior instructors are not the only advantages 
which college students enjoy over students in lower schools; 
there is also more liberty of thinking. Notwithstanding 
the efforts that newspapers, politicians, and occasional 
patrons have sometimes made to put stoppers in the 



l6o STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

mouths of professors of political economy, there yet 
exists a large measure of academical freedom. Still, some 
professors feel it necessary to be circumspect in dealing 
with certain economical and financial fallacies that 
threaten society. And it would hardly be safe to intro- 
duce into the,.public high schools a course entitled ' ' Pop- 
ular Delusions." In those schools a teacher could, no 
doubt, work his will upon the tulip craze, the Mississippi 
Scheme, the South Sea Bubble, Continental money, mul- 
ticauliSy and blue glass, but prudence would counsel him 
to deal gently with protection and free-silver, and to leave 
theosophy and Christian Science wholly alone. 

The standard of measurement for the schools that Pres- 
ident Kliot sets up is the qualification of those who have 
attended them to discharge their social duties and to deal 
with social and political problems. He never tires of tell- 
ing us that the schools do not prevent strikes and boycotts, 
fallacies relating to silver and the tariff, theosophy and 
Christian Science, or drive astrologers and bone-setters 
out of business. This test, although a severe one, is per- 
fectly fair when it is properly explained and qualified. 
Assuredly, unless society is becoming more reasonable 
and human the State has little encouragement to perse- 
vere in providing free education for the people. How- 
ever, to measure the extent to which popular education 
has qualified the masses of our people to deal with social 
fallacies and delusions is a difficult undertaking. It is 
also an undertaking that cannot be entered upon in this 
place, but two facts or groups of facts may be stated that 
will at once show why it is difficult, and also explain in part 
why greater progress has not been made in that direction. 

First, the social and political problems that arise in a 
large and highly organized society are never easy. To 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. l6l 

deal with them effectively is the highest test of knowl- 
edge and mature discipline. They are not questions for 
boys or half-educated men, but for well-educated men; at 
least this is true of the more difficult of them. For 
example, there are few men at any time who are compe- 
tent judges of a revenue, educational, or financial system. 
Of those who hold what Dr. Eliot would consider sound 
opinions on the currency, a majority are largely guarded 
by authority. Besides, the enormous social and political 
changes that have been accomplished in a hundred years, 
and notably in our own country, have greatly increased 
the number and difficulty of such problems. Such causes 
as the growth of knowledge, the progress of invention, 
the extension of the area of civilization, the increase in 
the numbers and in the density of our population, have 
added immensely to the scope and complexity of society. 
In respect to commerce and trade, industries, the division 
of labor, education, transportation, literature and the 
press, benevolent and reformatory agencies and institu- 
tions, social life, and the distribution of wealth, how won- 
derfully heterogeneous American life has become ! Could 
the Americans of the last century be suddenly introduced 
to the America of to-day, the}^ would show a confusion 
similar to that shown by savages when conducted through 
the streets of a great city. The country moves at such 
speed that even well-educated men cannot maintain the 
pace and keep fulfy abreast of the questions and issues 
that concern them. The work of legislation constantly 
becomes more difficult and trying both in quantity and 
quality. Compare the legislation enacted by the General 
Court of Massachusetts, or by Congress, in the year 1792 
with that enacted in 1892. Still more, compare the legis- 
lation proposed in the first year with that proposed in the 
second. Nor does the constant enlargement of our admin- 



1 62 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

istrative and judicial systems prevent increasing complaints 
of poor and insufficient service. 

Secondly, at the same time that our society has been 
becoming more and more heterogeneous it has been becom- 
ing more and more democratized. Many conservative 
checks and balances that existed a century ago have been 
swept away and others have become mere fictions. For 
the first time in history a democracy of sixty-five millions 
of people, far advanced in social differentiation, is acting 
upon the stage of the world's affairs. Still more, since 
democracy tends to weaken authority, expert knowledge 
and opinion are generally undervalued. No doubt twelve 
Americans sitting in a jury-box pay as much heed to a 
chemist who swears that he found arsenic in a dead man's 
stomach as the same number of Frenchmen or Germans; 
but they certainly pay much less heed to educational 
and financial experts. The result is, that we cannot 
always command the best knowledge or the best thought 
that is current. For instance, the courses of instruction 
sent out by ministers of education from Paris, Dresden, and 
Berlin better represent the highest pedagogical thought of 
France, Saxony, and Prussia than those adopted by our 
thousands of school boards and school committees repre- 
sent our highest thought. The German States manage 
their educational affairs and their financial affairs better 
than we manage ours; but who, for a moment, supposes 
that a democratized German nation, holding such vast in- 
terests as ours in the hollow of its hand, and also such vast 
resources, would conduct them with more intelligence and 
reason ? It is further to be observed that a democratic 
society where elementary education is universal, is the 
best possible hotbed for the generation of crude theories, 
specious sophisms, and delusive hopes, particularly when 
human possibilities are so great as in the United States. 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION, 1 63 

The Athenians were the freest, the most intellectual, and 
the best educated people of antiquity: Athens also 
afforded the rhetorician, the sophist, and the demagogue 
unrivaled opportunities. 

Then it must not be forgotten that other factors than 
reason and knowledge play an important part in human 
life. Not many of the sophisms that ensnare men really 
have their tap-roots in bad thinking; for the most part 
they spring out of the interests, feelings, and passions of 
men. "The human understanding," says L,ord Bacon, 
"is no dry light, but receives an infusion from the will 
and affections; whence proceed sciences which may be 
called 'sciences as one would.' For what a man had 
rather were true he more readily believes. Therefore he 
rejects difficult things from impatience of research; sober 
things, because they narrow hope; the deeper things of 
nature, from superstition; the light of experience, from 
arrogance and pride, lest his mind should seem to be occu- 
pied with things mean and transitory; things not com- 
monly believed, out of deference to the opinion of the 
vulgar. Numberless in short are the ways, and some- 
times imperceptible, in which the affections color and 
infect the understanding." 1 Another Baconian phrase is 
"drenched and blooded;" and a recent writer, applying 
it to philosophies of life, says it is hard to decide 
how much is observation and how much hope, and 
whether the life is more determined by the philosophy 
or the philosophy by the life. 2 Herbert Spencer thus 
expresses the same fact, perhaps in an exaggerated 
form: "Ideas do not govern the world; the world is 
governed by feelings, to which ideas serve only as 
guides." 

1 Novum Organum, XLIX. 

2 Mackenzie: An Introduction to Social Philosophy, p. 2. 



164 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

It is almost needless to remark that the questions which 
Dr. Eliot uses for illustration are • ' drenched and blooded' ' 
questions. The advocates of fiat -money and free silver, 
• for example, may be roughly divided into the honest and 
dishonest, the first being much the larger class; but it 
must be said that the thinking of the honest class is in- 
fluenced or dominated by interest or other feelings. The 
subtle fallacies that lurk around the subject of money play 
with peculiar effect upon a mind that wants to believe 
them, especially if it is badly disciplined and informed. 
We may be perfectly certain that sophisms and delusions 
which ignorance and bad logic have not directly caused, 
knowledge and good logic will not directly correct. Such 
correction can be effected only indirectly, by enlarging 
and purifying the common intelligence. 

What follows then ?. That our social ills are incapable 
of further amelioration? Not so. Such ameliorations 
have been effected, and there is no reason to suppose that 
we have reached their limit. We need not doubt that the 
American people are managing their affairs better than 
any people that has preceded them could have managed 
them; or that, as our education improves in quality, as our 
civilization becomes more mature, as the people become 
better able to sift and to winnow what passes for knowl- 
edge, and particularly as they, are constrained to pay 
more attention to the experience of the past, they will 
learn to manage them still better. But there is nothing 
in human nature or in human experience that points to 
the conclusion that fallacies,, sophisms, and delusions will 
not always abound, or that education will ever fully 
neutralize them. Democracy is not a perpetual motion, 
or education a panacea. On the other hand, the intelli- 
gent and reasonable, the wise and disinterested, must 
always stand guard over the interests of society. 



PRESIDENT ELIOT ON POPULAR EDUCATION. 1 65 

Perhaps it is not impertinent to observe that I have not 
confined my remarks strictly to Dr. Eliot's article. I 
have combated views that he has not expressed, and that 
I have no reason to suppose that he holds. They are 
views, however, that relate to the topics which he handles. 
Still more, I have brought forward topics that he has not 
mooted, because I consider their consideration essential to 
the full discussion of the main subject. 



VII. 

THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR IN THE 
UNIVERSITY AND COLLEGE. 1 




EDAGOGICAIy instruction has long been 
given in the principal universities of Germany. 
Since 1876 the Bell Chairs of the Theory, 
History, and Art of Education have existed 
in the Universities of St. Andrews and Edinburgh, Scot- 
land, and still more recently similar chairs have been 
established in several of the universities of the United 
States. The object of this paper is to justify the existence 
of these chairs; not pedagogical instruction or pedagogical 
chairs in general, but such instruction and such chairs 
in the university and college. 

At the outset, attention may be drawn to three historical 
facts. Germany leads the world in scholarship and 
scientific research, and particularly in the cultivation of 
educational science; Scotland, also, is a classic land of 
learning and of schools; moreover, our American chairs of 
pedagogy are a result of the widest and profoundest in- 
terest in educational subjects known to our history. 
These facts are very significant, creating a strong pre- 
sumption that these German, Scottish, and American 
professorships are not the result of ignorance or accident, 
but of a felt need and intelligent choice. From the high 

1 A paper read before the Normal Department of the National 
Educational Association, Nashville, Tenn., July, 1889. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 1 67 

vantage-ground of this presumption the broader aspects 
of the subject will be surveyed. 

The word "education" is one of the most plastic and 
flexible in the language. It is used dynamically and 
statically, in a collective and an individual sense. Ex- 
cluding all life but human life, also the collective and the 
static senses, we find the word employed in three different 
acceptations. 

1. The process of transformation wrought in a man by 
all the agents and powers that act on him, of whatever 
kind, from the cradle to the grave; as well those that con- 
stitute his natural and social environments as those that 
constitute the home and the school; as well those that are 
blind, unconscious, and unpremeditated as those that are 
intelligent, conscious, and premeditated. 

2. The process of transformation wrought in a man by 
the premeditated action of society, with a view of develop- 
ing his powers and moulding his character; such efforts 
being put forth more especially in his infancy and youth. 

3. The process of transformation wrought in a man, 
mostly in his youth and plastic years, by governors and 
tutors, and particularly in schools of some sort. 

The first of these definitions includes both the others; 
the second includes the third. Just how much of the 
whole field the science of education covers, and whether 
this science and pedagogy are coextensive, are questions 
not definitely settled. ' ' A complete history of education, ' ' 
says Compayr£, "would embrace in its vast developments, 
the entire record of the intellectual and moral culture of 
mankind at all periods and in all countries. It would be 
a rfcume of the life of humanity in its diverse manifesta- 
tions, literary and scientific, religious and political. It 
would determine the causes, so numerous and so diverse, 



l68 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

which act upon the characters of men, and which, modi- 
fying a common endowment, produce beings as different 
as are a contemporary of Pericles and a modern European, 
a Frenchman of the Middle Ages, and a Frenchman sub- 
sequent to the Revolution." 1 The extreme limits of this 
field are determined by such inquiries as those that have 
engaged the attention of Mr. E. B. Tylor and Sir John 
Ivubbock, on the one hand, and such speculations and 
visions as those of Plato, Gerson, and Swedenborg, on 
the other. A history of education in this sense would be, 
as Compayre* remarks, <( a sort of philosophy of history, 
to which nothing would be foreign, and which would 
scrutinize in its most varied and most trifling causes, as 
well as in its most profound sources, the moral life of 
humanity." The university cultivates this vast field, 
although not under the name of a single science. The 
chairs of anthropology, history, archaeology and antiqui- 
ties, philosophy, literature, philology, ethics, comparative 
religion, jurisprudence, economics, and politics mark its 
most important subdivisions. No one denies the univer- 
sity's right to investigate or teach every one of these sub- 
jects. But when, with M. Compayre, we throw out the 
" 'occult coadjutors of education — climate, race, manners, 
social condition, political institutions, religious beliefs," 
and narrow the field to the "premeditated action which 
the will of one man exercises over other men in order to 
instruct them and train them"; or when, with Dr. Bain, 
we throw out still other factors, and confine the science 
of education to the ' 'arts and methods employed by the 
schoolmaster," as typifying the educational process in its 
greatest singleness and purity 2 — when this is done, is the 
remaining territory the proper subject of university in- 

1 The History of Pedagogy. — Introduction. 
2 Education as a Science, p. 6. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 1 69 

vestigation and instruction ? So long as the university- 
investigates and teaches the ideas, habits, customs, gov- 
ernments, and religions of the lowest savages — that is, the 
whole compass of their culture — it will be difficult to deny 
its right to treat with equal respect the educational ideas, 
theories, methods, appliances, and systems of the most 
highly civilized nations. 

By common consent the university has two great func- 
tions. One of these is research, the discovery of truth; 
the other is instruction, the practice of the art of teach- 
ing; that is, the university first finds out truth and then 
gives it forth. The two interact. Furthermore, the 
university not only practices 1 research, but it makes re- 
search itself the object of study and investigation. Science 
becomes conscious and reflective, and lays bare all her 
processes and methods. Why, then, should it not inves- 
tigate and teach its other function, that of teaching ? Why 
should an institution that exists for the sake of investi- 
gating the arts and sciences leave its own peculiar art 
neglected and despised ? 

But education is much more than a great and difficult 
art: it is a noble science. Back of its methods, processes, 
and systems are facts, ideas, principles, and theories — 
in fact, whole systems of philosophy. As Rosenkranz 
remarks, pedagogy cannot be deduced from a single prin- 
ciple with such strictness as logic and ethics, but is a 
mixed science, like medicine, deriving its presuppositions 
from other sciences, 1 as physiology, psychology, logic, 
esthetics, ethics, and sociology. It is therefore conditioned 
on some of the noblest of the sciences, especially those 
of the moral group. The very fact that it is a mixed 

1 The Philosophy of Education, p. 1. Translated by Anna C. 
Brackett. 



170 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

vScience adds to its difficulty, and emphasizes the demand 
for its cultivation. It is hard to see how the university, 
whose admitted function is education, can pass by the 
science, art, and history of education without discrediting 
its own work and virtually denying its own name. To 
practice the art while refusing to cultivate or teach the 
science of teaching, is little better than rank empiricism. 

The last argument derives additional strength from the 
peculiar stage of education upon which the foremost 
nations and countries have now entered. Education has 
at last reached the reflective or scientific stage. Throw- 
ing off the clutch of the empiricist, she has ascended to her 
long-vacant seat in the family of the sciences. Evidences 
of this are the increased attention paid to education by 
text-writers on psychology and ethics, the later pedago- 
gical literature, the more .systematic and rational methods 
of instruction in schools, and the rapidly- increasing facili- 
ties for teaching educational science. Thus the very 
existence of the chair is a proof of its usefulness and its 
necessity. On this ground alone — indeed, on the nar- 
rower ground of endowing research — the chair can be 
fully vindicated. 

Again, education has a history. In the very broadest 
sense, as we have seen, the field of educational history is 
the field of human culture; and even when limited, as 
before, to the conscious work of teachers in schools, it 
still presents whole series of facts, problems, and lessons 
of the greatest interest and importance. Before the 
teacher lies the whole field of school-life, from the simple 
prophets' and priests' schools of early times to the highly 
developed schools and school systems of Europe and 
America. While education belongs to general history, 
the study of which is pursued for its culture value, it has 
been almost wholly neglected. The writer and lecturer 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 171 

on general history do indeed touch the education of the 
ancients, and make mention of the Medieval universities; 
they pay some attention to the marvelous educational 
developments of modern times; but they lay much more 
emphasis on subjects of far inferior interest. But educa- 
tion should be made the subject of special historical 
study as much as religion, art, or politics. Were it as 
thoroughly investigated as the Polytechnic School of 
Munich investigates engineering (maintaining forty- 
five distinct courses of lectures in that science), the 
history of education alone would tax the resources of 
the most learned and laborious professor. It is not con- 
tended that the chair of pedagogy can at present cul- 
tivate this field as carefully as this allusion may imply ; 
but certainly here are topics of the greatest interest and 
importance, that demand admission to the university list 
on an equal footing with other subjects of historical 
investigation. So long as the history of education is 
a means of education, so long will it continue a proper 
university study. 

Thus far the argument has been theoretical, resting on 
the speculative need of investigating the science, art, and 
history of teaching, and on their educational value. But 
the practical phases of the subject must also be presented. 

1. Even if the work done by the pedagogical chair 
should pay no immediate attention to the preparation of 
teachers, it could not fail to be of much practical value. 
The scientific study and teaching of a science and an art, 
in their purely theoretical aspects, always promote, the 
practice of the art; and the presence in every universuy 
in the land of a pedagogical professor, thoroughly de- 
voted to his chair, could not fail to quicken interest in 
the subject and to promote the teaching art. 



172 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

2. While it is a serious error to hold the university to 
be merely a place of instruction, and to overlook research 
— an error that is only too common in the United States — 
instruction is still one of its grand functions. It is en- 
gaged in teaching the highest branches of knowledge. 
Its professors hold their chairs by reason of their profes- 
sional ability, as well as by reason of their learning. 
Where, then, may the science, the history, and the art of 
teaching be so properly taught as where the art nourishes 
in a high form ? 

3. The conditions of pedagogical study existing in the 
university, taken all together, are the best that exist any- 
where. First, the university offers the student a varied 
curriculum from which to choose collateral studies. Sec- 
ondly, it illustrates teaching in all the branches of liberal, 
and in many branches of technical, study. Thirdly, the 
library, which furnishes an extensive apparatus for gen- 
eral as well as special study, is an invaluable facility. 
Fourthly, the university is the home of liberal studies; 
its traditions and associations are conducive to cultivation, 
and the student in residence finds himself in the midst of 
a learned and cultivated society. 

This point is deserving of a more elaborate statement. 
It is well known that special schools tend at once to depth 
and narrowness; intension is secured at the expense of 
extension. This is necessary to a degree; but if the pro- 
cess is carried too far, mischievous results follow. Hence 
the advantage of uniting the professional school with the 
school of liberal studies - an advantage greater now than 
ever before, because scholars, men of science, and teach- 
ers are pushing specialization to its extreme limits. We 
should not be surprised, therefore, to find writers who 
have touched the topic, laying much stress on the advan- 
tage to the student of receiving his pedagogical instruc- 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 1 73 

tion in an academical institution. Professor Laurie insists 
that the teachers of the secondary schools of Scotland 
need professional preparation as well as university train- 
ing. "Where shall they get this?" he asks. " They 
might be required to combine attendance at a training 
college with attendance at the university for a degree; 
but this, though it might serve as a provisional arrange- 
ment, would not secure the end we seek. And why 
should not this arrangement secure the end we seek? For 
this reason, and for no other, that a specialist training 
college does not answer the same purpose as a university. 
The broader culture, the purer air, the higher aims of 
the latter, give to it an educational influence which spe- 
cialist colleges can never exercise." 1 

Whether academical teaching should be furnished in a 
normal school, is a question often discussed. That ques- 
tion does not come within the range of this paper; but 
the observation may be made that such instruction must 
be defended theoretically, if at all, on the ground of its 
liberalizing and strengthening tendencies. 

4. It is a function of the university to furnish society 
with teachers. Research, teaching, and the preparation 
of teachers are the three great duties that it owes society. 
The preparation of teachers for primary and grammar 
schools, and possibly for the lower classes of high 
schools, might be left to normal and training schools; but 
high schools and other secondary schools must receive 
their character from teachers of a higher grade of schol- 
arship. It is a favorite conceit of some public-school 
men, as well as many citizens, that the public schools are 
fully adequate to create their own teachers, unless it be 
in some of the more special lines of high-school stud}' 
and instruction; even the superintendents, they hold, 

l The Training of Teachers, pp. 10, 11. 



174 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

should "come up from the ranks;" but no man who un- 
derstands the tendencies and effects of specialization, par- 
ticularly the results of breeding in-and-in, will for a 
moment favor such a narrow policy. The public schools 
have done an invaluable work in furnishing teachers to 
society; but it is a weighty fact that no schools more need 
to be kept in vital relation with the schools of higher 
instruction. 

5. The chair of pedagogy and the teaching profession 
need the strength and dignity that university recognition 
will give them. Such recognition will be the strongest 
testimony that the university can bear to the public of 
the estimate in which it holds the great art that it prac- 
tices. In that way, too, it will most strongly impress its 
students with the estimate in which it holds the teacher's 
calling. When our aspiring young men and women see 
accomplished professors of the science, art, and history 
of teaching in the universities and colleges of the land, 
vying with the professors of philosophy, ethics, jurispru- 
dence, political economy, and history in the exposition of 
their favorite subjects, they will form a higher concep- 
tion of the teacher's work. This argument also has been 
urged with much force by writers on education. Profes- 
sor I^aurie, for example, says that the teaching profession 
of Scotland, almost with one voice, hailed the action of 
the Trustees of the Bell Fund when they established the 
Bell chairs at St. Andrews and Edinburgh. The feeling 
was that they had ' ' conferred honor on a department of 
work that Dr. Bell delighted to honor. They have un- 
questionably done very much to promote education in 
Scotland, not only by raising the work of the schoolmas- 
ter in public estimation, but also by attracting public 
attention to education as being not merely a question of 
machinery for the institution of schools (essential though 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 1 75 

this undoubtedly is), but a question of principles and 
methods — in brief, of philosophy." He says, further, 
that the institution of the Edinburgh chair increased the 
importance of the teaching body, gave it academical 
standing, and made it possible for the first time to insti- 
tute in the universities a faculty of education, like the 
faculties of law, medicine, and theology. 1 

The argument can be strengthened by historical analo- 
gies. Professional instruction has long been given in the 
highest seminaries of learning. The learned professions 
have loved to nestle under the wings of the universities. 
The faculties of theology, law, and medicine have so long 
been constituent parts of the university that some may 
suppose that such has always been the case. But this is 
not the fact: the faculty of arts is the original faculty on 
which the university was founded, and around which the 
other faculties have grown up. One of our ablest Ameri- 
can pedagogists — my honored predecessor at the Uni- 
versity of Michigan, President W. H. Payne — says: 
' ' The main strength of the recognized professions is 
their organic connection with great seats of learning. 
L,aw, medicine, and theology," he goes so far as to say, 
' ' had never been professions except on the condition of 
university recognition and support ; nor could their 
professional character be sustained if this support were 
withdrawn." 2 

The argument from recognition derives additional 
strength from the history of education. No other noble 
art have men treated with such general contempt. No 
other noble calling, at least in its lower walks, has been 
abandoned to such unworthy agents. According to 
Socrates, the Athenians took more care in selecting train- 

1 The Training of Teachers, pp. 6, 7, 17. 

2 Contributions to the Science of Education, p. 269. 



I76 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ers for their horses than for their children; and Plutarch 
says that in his day, as men assigned their slaves to dif- 
ferent employment according to their fitness, if they 
found any slave who was a drunkard, or a glutton, or 
unfit for any other business, they made him a pedagogue. 
Luther says he was whipped fifteen times on one day at 
school because he could not recite what he had not been 
taught. Compayre says as late as 1837 the French 
schoolmasters practiced all the trades; they were day 
laborers, shoemakers, ushers, beadles, and inn-keepers;, 
they were poorly paid and enjoyed no social considera- 
tion; they were on the same footing as mendicants, and 
were often infirm, crippled, and unfit for any kind of 
work. Carleton has described the hedge school of Ire- 
land in one of his graphic tales. Whether men have de- 
spised the training of children, and so committed it to such 
unworthy agents, or whether they have allowed it to fall 
into such hands and then despised it, is immaterial; but 
certainly from classic days to recent times the elementary 
school and its teachers have been made the subjects of 
keenest ridicule. What a figure the schoolmaster cuts 
in literature, from the days of the flogging Orbilius to the 
days of Dominie Sampson and Squeers! Commonly cruel 
and tyrannical, generally ignorant, always uncouth and 
awkward, and, if occasionally learned, also pedantic, the 
schoolmaster of literature is not a character in whom one 
can feel a professional pride. No doubt the satirists have 
made the most of their opportunity; no doubt there have 
been many admirable teachers; but, on the whole, the 
repute of no other workman has fallen so far below his 
work as the repute of the teacher. We live in better 
times. At present society is demanding that teachers 
shall have higher literary qualifications, and that they 
shall be superior persons; both of them most hopeful 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 177 

signs. The university will materially strengthen these 
tendencies by maintaining the chair of education. 

6. There is a still broader ground on which the 
question can be urged. Teachers are not the only per- 
sons who are interested in educational problems. Those 
problems concern, and should interest, all intelligent men 
and women. If the graduates from our higher institu- 
tions of learning could take two courses of lectures, one 
in the theory and practice and one in the history of edu- 
cation, before receiving their diplomas, they would find 
the knowledge and training thus received of very great 
advantage to them. Mr. Spencer's vigorous argument 
on this point will not soon be forgotten. "The subject 
which involves all other subjects, and therefore the sub- 
ject in which the education of every one should terminate, 
is the theory and practice of teaching." 

7. The university itself needs the chair of education to 
give it completeness and symmetry. So long as its right 
— its duty even — to investigate and teach the arts and 
sciences generally is not only admitted but asserted, it is 
strange indeed that anyone should question its right and 
duty to investigate and teach its own processes and the 
principles underlying them. The fact is, that in this 
respect the American university has been an empiricist. 
Heretofore it might say in self-defense that education was 
largely empirical; but that argument has now lost most 
of its force. Nor can a university in any other way so 
effectually defend education against that charge as by 
creating a professorship to cultivate it as a science. 

But this is not all: the university needs the chair for 
practical reasons, separate and apart from the preparation 
of teachers. Its occupant, if a man of real force and 
attainments, could not fail to stimulate pedagogical thought 
among both professors and students, thus creating a 



178 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

mental habit and an atmosphere that would be useful in 
many ways. Somebody in the faculty should stand for 
educational science. Particular stress may be laid on 
the new university conditions growing out of elective 
studies, such as throwing upon students the difficult 
and important subject of educational values. Then 
the study of education may be strongly recommended to 
advanced students on disciplinary and culture grounds. 
When they near the end of the curriculum they cannot, 
indeed, correct the mistakes that they have made; but 
they can coordinate their knowledge and their ideas, 
giving to the sum-total of their attainments something of 
the form and consistency of system. And this is in the 
highest degree desirable. It solidifies, and so preserves, 
what has been learned, and influences further acquire- 
ment. It is my firm conviction that university seniors 
generally could spend a semester in such an intellectual 
clearing-house with the greatest advantage. Nor is there 
any place where this work can be so well done as in the 
classroom of a competent professor of pedagogy. On this 
ground alone the chair of pedagogy in the higher institu- 
tions can be successfully advocated. 

The history of the universities throws much light on 
our subject, and I shall close by stating some of the more 
important facts of that history. 1 

In the older universities of the Parisian model, instruc- 
tion was not confided to a special body of professors, but 
the university was taught and governed by the graduates- 
at-large. Professor, master and doctor were synonymous 
terms. Every graduate had the equal right to teach pub- 

1 See Sir William Hamilton's articles on " English Universities " 
and "University Reform," first published in the Edinburgh Re- 
view, and now found in his Discussions on Philosophy ; etc. 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. 1 79 

licly in the university the subjects belonging to his faculty 
and to the rank of his degree, and was even required by 
the terms of his degree to do so. The bachelor was 
bound to read under a master or doctor of his faculty 
a course of lectures; and the master or doctor was obliged 
immediately to commence (incepere), and to continue for 
a certain period to teach (regere), some of the subjects 
belonging to his faculty. Hence "commencement," the 
time when the perfect graduate commenced to teach, and 
the so-called " necessary regency." However, the uni- 
versities did not enforce the obligation of public teaching 
so long as there was a competent number of voluntary 
teachers or regents to do the work; besides, the schools 
belonging to the several faculties were frequently inade- 
quate to accommodate the young inceptors. And so it 
came to pass that the period of necessary regency was 
successively shortened, and finally dispensations from 
actual teaching were commonly allowed. In these cir- 
cumstances originated the distinction of regent and ?io?i- 
regent; to the first of whom, progressively, full privileges 
of legislation and government came to be confined. This 
distinction was most rigidly marked in the f acuity of the 
arts. ' ' In the other faculties, ' ' says Sir William Hamil- 
ton, "both Paris and Oxford, all doctors succeeded in 
usurping the style and privileges of regent, though not 
actually engaged in teaching; and in Oxford the same 
was allowed to masters of the faculty of arts during the 
statutory period of their necessary regency, even when 
availing themselves of a dispensation from the per- 
formance of its duties, and extended to the heads of 
houses and to college deans." He says further that 
the teaching function was accorded the bachelor on 
two grounds: " Partly as an exercise towards the higher 
honor, and useful to himself; partly as a performance 



l8o STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

due for the degree obtained, and of an advantage to 
others. ' ' In Germany the course of academical history- 
was somewhat different. There the thesis that the candi- 
date for the Doctor's degree is now required to ' ' defend, ' ' 
as well as to read, is a survival of the ancient custom. 

It is not difficult to discover the causes that made 
bachelors as well as masters of arts university teachers, and 
that afterwards ousted them from their privileges. The 
multitude of pupils that flocked to the Medieval universi- 
ties— 20,000 to Bologna and 30,000 to Oxford— many of 
whom were very young and immature, called for a large 
number of teachers. The university felt its obligations 
to the public. Moreover, the conviction that teaching is 
a most important means of learning had great influence. 
The establishment of secondary schools, which drew 
away the younger pupils from the universities; the growth 
of science in both breadth and depth; the development 
of specialization in teaching and in research, and the 
ambition of the Dons — these are the main causes that 
banished from the university the somewhat miscellane- 
ous body of teachers of the earlier times, and established 
a body of professional instructors. The change was not 
only natural but inevitable. 

The causes that banished the body of graduates from the 
university as teachers will prevent their reappearance in 
that capacity. The university cannot again furnish society 
with teachers, or teachers with needed discipline, in the 
ancient manner. The forces that. worked the great change 
are far stronger to prevent its being unworked. This is 
a revolution that will not go backward. What then? 
Shall the university forget its ancient function of furnish- 
ing society with teachers ? Shall it pretend that when it 
has made scholars it has also made teachers, and thus 
ignore or deny the value of professional training ? Shall 



THE PEDAGOGICAL CHAIR. l8l 

it confine itself to research and to teaching? Or shall it 
remember its ancient practice, and, recognizing all the 
new conditions, including the demand for the professional 
training of teachers, establish and maintain the Chair of 
Education until the time comes for it to give way to the 
Faculty of Education ? This last is a question to which 
there can be but one final answer. 

It will be seen that while the university and college are 
mentioned together in the caption of this paper, the 
university alone has been mentioned in the argument. 
Hence the observation that, as the college raises its stand- 
ard and approaches the level of university work, the same 
reasons will apply to it as to the university. 




VIII. 

THE CULTURE VALUE OF THE HIS- 
TORY OF EDUCATION. 1 

HE appearance on the morning's programme 
of the subjects following my own will cause no 
surprise. That the history of education con- 
tains lessons of great practical value for the 
educational statesman, for the school administrator, and 
for the teacher, are propositions by no means novel, 
even if their importance is not fully appreciated. 
That this history also has great culture value may 
not be a novel proposition, but it is certainly much less 
familiar than the others, and is much less appreciated. 
This is the proposition that I am to bring into the fore- 
ground. 

I must first explain that by the culture value of the 
subject I mean its total value separate and apart from 
guidance or practice. Everything that the history of 
education does for the mind as such, whether training its 
powers, storing it with information, or planting it with 
fruitful ideas, is included in the topic. In this discussion, 
however, it will not be necessary, or advantageous, to sep- 
arate the total culture product into these several parts. 

Possibly it is commonly supposed that the history of 
education consists of dry bits of information relating to 
studies, methods of school organization, teaching and 
discipline, school legislation, and school appliances, to- 

*A paper read before the National Educational Association at 
Nashville, Tenn., July, 1889. 

182 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 1 83 

gether with personal notices of some quite peculiar and 
uninteresting men called schoolmasters and educational 
reformers. It does indeed embrace all these subjects, which 
are of such great practical importance; however, if this were 
all we could not make a very large culture claim for the 
•study. But this is far from being all; it is, in fact, but 
husk and rind, so far as culture is concerned. It would 
not be easy to name a division of the history of philosophy, 
or of the philosophy of history, that brings before the 
mind a richer store of facts or a more interesting group 
of problems. 

First, educational systems in the legal sense are an im- 
portant department of law, and an interesting branch of 
institutional history. Education is recognized in every 
one of our State constitutions, in some of them at much 
length; while our State school laws are among the most 
characteristic parts of American legislation. It is an 
obvious remark, that these laws reflect the character and 
temper of our people, and partake of the nature of our 
institutions as a whole. It may be equally obvious that 
these laws, so far from being based on certain a priori 
principles, conform throughout to our local political insti- 
tutions. For example, there are in the United States two 
radically different systems of local government. In New 
England the unit of government is the town; in the South, 
the county. In the one section, the county is used for 
judicial purposes only; in the other, the town is nothing 
but the jurisdiction of a justice of the peace and an elec- 
tion district. A third system has sprung up from the 
combination of these two. The compromise system of 
the old Middle States, and of the West, makes less of the 
town and more of the county than New England, and less 
of the county and more of the town than the Southern 



184 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

States. Our State school systems, corresponding to these 
large institutional facts, are also divisible into three 
groups. Until the recent Vermont legislation in relation 
to the county superintendency, I am not aware that the 
word "county" was found in the school law of a single 
New England State. At the South, again, school officers 
and school machinery belong mainly to the county. And 
finally, the compromise-system States use both the town 
and the county for educational purposes, just as they do 
for the other objects of local government. 

Examples of the correspondence between school systems 
and their social and political environments are plentifully 
furnished by. the states of Europe. In France and 
Germany, the administration of the schools and of educa- 
tion is highly centralized, like every other department of 
public affairs; while that large piece of patch- work called 
the Elementary Education Acts well illustrates the slow 
process of evolution by which the institutions of England 
have been produced, the heterogeneous elements of which 
they are composed, and the extreme conservatism of the 
English mind. 

Education therefore is deserving of study as a part of 
the institutions of nations. The education of youth is 
certainly a much more important element of civilization 
than the punishment of criminals, but educational insti- 
tutions have been less studied than penal institutions by 
others than professional educators. 

In the second place, educational systems, considered as 
mental and moral disciplines, are developments of ideas; 
they are born of philosophies, religions, civilizations. 
This can be shown adequately for the occasion by an out- 
line map of the territory that the history of education 
covers. Frequently the division lines will overlap, but 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 1 8 



my object is to give a general view of the field and not a 
close logical analysis. 

1. The inquiry how education has been influenced 
by particular civilizations would include the effects of 
national ideals, as those of Athens, Sparta, and Rome in 
ancient times, and Prussia and America in modern times. 
It would embrace also the educational results of the 
caste system of Hindustan, of democracy in the Gre- 
cian republics, of absolute monarchy in France under 
the ancien regime, of constitutionalism in England, and 
of republicanism in the United States. Nor would the 
inquiry end with the influence of the several factors in 
the particular countries where they existed; many of their 
most interesting results would be found in remote lands 
and in distant times. China did not make any contribu- 
tion to current Western educational history until, a few 
years ago, we began to study her civil-service and exami- 
nation systems; but Greece, from her character and geo- 
graphical position, has profoundly influenced the educa- 
tion of every Western country since the days that she 
sent her colonies to Italy, Gaul, and Spain. 

2. The educational effects of schools of thought come 
next. Exclusive of theology, thought has moved in two 
main channels. The first Greek thinkers occupied them- 
selves with physical problems. They sought to under- 
stand and to explain nature; but their explanations, as 
was natural, are now thought rather curious than valuable. 
Socrates at first studied the same subjects; but, failing to 
reach results that satisfied him, and becoming con- 
vinced that the gods had withheld the causes of ma- 
terial things from the knowledge of men, he applied 
himself to human problems, and so became the founder of 
philosophy. His motto was "Know thyself;" and 
although the scientific treatises of Aristotle and the phys- 



1 86 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ical discoveries of the Alexandrian philosophers were 
promising anticipations of modern science, thought con- 
tinued to flow mainly in the humanistic channel for two 
thousand years. In the large sense, Socrates was the first 
and the greatest of humanists. In the seventeenth century 
we come upon the main stream of the second great intel- 
lectual movement. In English-speaking countries, and in 
all countries where the experimental philosophy has made a 
deep impression, the name of L,ord Bacon has been, and 
still is, more closely identified with this movement than 
that of any other thinker. In late years there has been a 
tendency to challenge Bacon's claims, but we must in 
fairness acknowledge the force and j ustness of Professor 
Fowler's words, " He called men, as with the voice of a 
herald, to lay themselves alongside of Nature, to study her 
ways, and imitate her processes. To use his own homely 
simile, he rang the bell which called the other wits to- 
gether. Other men indeed had said much the same thing in 
whispers, or in learned books written for a circle of select 
readers ; but Bacon cried it from the housetops, and in- 
vited all men to come in freely and partake of the feast. 
In one word, he popularized the study of nature. He 
insisted, both by example and precept, on the influence of 
experiment as well as observation. Nature, like a wit- 
ness, when put to the torture, would reveal her secrets. ' ' l 

Thus the name of Bacon stands for science as the name 
of Socrates stands for philosophy. It is impossible to 
name subjects more unlike in matter than these two 
subjects. They present also strong differences of pro- 
cess and -method in both investigation and exposition. 
The historian of education is not concerned with these 
great intellectual movements as such, or with humanist or 
scientist; but he is intimately concerned to know and to 

1 Bacon, p. 197. 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 1 87 

explain how they have affected the study of mind and 
shaped theories of human nature; how they have moulded 
educational ideas and furnished the materials of study; 
how they have influenced the scale of educational values, 
and determined methods of teaching and school govern- 
ment. Who shall estimate the pedagogical consequences 
of such Baconian utterances as these: ' ' Man is the servant 
and the interpreter of nature;" "We can only conquer 
nature by first obeying her;" and, "The kingdom of 
man, which was founded on the sciences, cannot be entered 
otherwise than the kingdom of God— that is, in the 
spirit of a little child?" 

A still more particular inquiry as to philosophy is this: 
How has education been affected by its various systems, 
as the Platonic and the Aristotelian, Sensationalism and 
Idealism ? 

3. How has education been influenced, as respects its 
ideals, its subject matter, its methods, by the religions and 
churches of the world, and by particular movements and 
organizations within them ? To be more specific, what has 
been the influence of historical Christianity, and of such cur- 
rents within its wide stream as asceticism, scholasticism, 
mysticism, Protestantism, and the Catholic revival? M. 
de I^aveleye, the distinguished Belgian publicist and 
economist, once said: " The Reformed religion rests on a 
book — the Bible." " Catholic worship, on the contrary, 
rests upon sacraments and certain practices y such as con- 
fessions, masses, sermons. " What, if any, is the educa- 
tional significance of these two facts ? 

No man competent to deal with this problem is likely to 
question that, as a whole, Chris tianity far transcends any 
other force or movement that has acted upon education. 
Consider for one moment the tremendous momentum that 
the enthusiasm of humanity has given to educational 



l88 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

effort. ' ' A new commandment I give unto you, that you 
love one another; as I have loved you, that ye also love 
one another. ' ' Undoubtedly, men who approached educa- 
tion on the secular side have done educational work of 
very great value; but the men who have burned with 
educational zeal — the evangelists of new fields, the heroes 
of new conquests, the martyrs of the cause — have been 
Christian men, filled with the spirit of Him who was 
moved with compassion on the multitude, when He saw 
that they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep 
having no shepherd. Nor, as the centuries pass away, 
does this flame burn less pure or bright. It warmed the 
heart of Pestalozzi as well as of St. Boniface. All in all, 
the educational influence of John Amos Comenius has been 
greater than that of any other man of recent times. And 
Comenius was a Moravian bishop, impelled in all his un- 
dertakings by the same spirit that sent some of his brethren 
as missionaries to the snows of Greenland and others to 
the forests of Ohio. ' ' As Comenius increased in years, ' ' 
says Professor Laurie, "the religious element in his 
educational theories assumed more and more prominence. 
But he never lost sight of his leading principles. The 
object of all education was to train children to be sons of 
God, but the way to do this was through knowledge, and 
knowledge was through method." 1 

4. Next may be mentioned the educational conse- 
quences flowing from intellectual eras or epochs; as the 
reaction of Greece upon Rome, the Renaissance, the mod- 
ern scientific era, the ascendency of the French mind 
in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the won- 
derful growth of German influence since the downfall of 
Napoleon. There are conjunctions in the world's history 
where we find real new educations; such as the intro- 

1 John Amos Comenius: p. 213. 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 1 89 

duction of the Greek learning into Italy by the Romans, 
the revival of ancient letters, and the expansion of modern 
science. 

5. The rationalistic movement, which Mr. Lecky 
well characterizes as, - c not any class of definite doc- 
trines or criticisms, but rather a certain cast of thought, 
or bias of reasoning," began with the revival of letters, 
and has continued its resistless sweep until it has sapped 
the basis of authority, greatly weakened faith, swept vast 
masses of dogma into the limbo of things forgotten, 
set up new standards or modified old ones in almost every 
department of life, and restored to civilization the old 
Greek spirit of inquiry. How this yeast has worked 
since the time when the disciples of Abelard prayed their 
master to give them ' c some philosophical arguments, 
such as were fit to satisfy their minds; begged that he 
would instruct them, not merely to repeat what he taught 
them, but to understand !" How great the distance that 
separates us from the day when Scheiner, the monk, was 
told by his superior that he could not have seen spots 
on the sun, since Plato and Aristotle mentioned nothing 
of the kind in their writings ! 

6. Then there is modern democracy, or the universal 
spirit, that, repudiating the old theological theory of 
government, and basing the state on the dogma of contract, 
has profoundly modified every department of life. 

7. The secularizing tendency, which, as well as democ- 
racy, is closely connected with the rationalistic movement, 
has changed educational ideals, broken up old courses of 
study and made new ones, and, to a great extent, com- 
pelled the clergy to pass the educational torch to laic 
hands. 

8. Last of all may be mentioned material progress, 
perhaps the greatest fact in a time of great facts. The 



I9O STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

opening up to civilization of the vast regions of the earth 
unknown before the Age of Maritime Discovery, or unoc- 
cupied, together with the power over Nature that discovery 
and invention have conferred upon man, has piled Ossa 
on Pelion until we no longer even guess what the sur- 
prises of the future will be. However, we shall hardly 
dissent from the opinion of Mr. Spencer : • l Throughout 
the civilized world, especially in England, and above all 
in America, social activity is almost wholly expended in 
material development. To subjugate Nature, and bring 
the powers of production and distribution to their highest 
perfection, is the task of our age; and probably of many 
future ages." r It is true that material progress, like 
many other parts of modern civilization, is largely a 
product of modern education; but it has reacted upon its 
cause, changing ideals, substituting new subject-matter 
for old, and modifying school methods. " It is im- 
possible," says Mr. L,ecky, "to lay down a railway 
without creating an intellectual influence. It is probable 
that Watt and Stephenson will eventually modify the 
opinions of mankind almost as profoundly as L,uther or 
Voltaire." 2 While the transforming educational power 
of material progress has already been very great, it is 
certain to be still greater. Men are not wanting who tell 
us that an education based on books, no matter how it 
may have answered the demands of civilization hitherto, 
is ill-suited to the wants of an industrial and commercial 
age, and that we must create a new education based on 
things and manual processes. This is an extreme claim; 
but we readily see how it has originated, and why it is 
pressed with such persistence. 

1 Essay on The Morals of Trade. 

2 Rationalism in Europe, pp. 1, 8. 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 19I 

But we must look at our subject under a third aspect. 
The school is a product of civilization, and, historically, a 
late one, later than the family, state, and church. But 
it has reacted with marked power and effect upon civiliz- 
ation, modifying its forms, changing its spirit, recon- 
structing its ideals, and altering its character. Moreover, 
this reflex influence is constantly growing in strength. 
More and more the schoolmaster is getting abroad. 
Stronger and stronger becomes the thread of educa- 
tion in the strand of civilized life. Formal argument is 
hardly called for to prove these propositions, but one or 
two historical illustrations will not be out of place. 

Says Mr. John Fiske : ' ' The Puritan theory of life lay 
at the bottom of the whole system of popular education 
in New England. According to that theory, it was 
absolutely essential that every one should be taught from 
early childhood how to read and understand the Bible. 
So much instruction as this was assumed to be a sacred 
duty which the community owed to every child born 
w r ithin its jurisdiction." The results of the system of 
schools that sprang from this root idea are before the 
world. Mr. Fiske finds the same theory of life acting in 
Scotland; and he goes so far as to say: " And one need 
not fear contradiction in saying that no other people 
in modern times, in proportion to their numbers, have 
achieved so much in all departments of human activity as 
the people of Scotland have achieved. It would be super- 
fluous to mention the preeminence of Scotland in the 
industrial arts since the days of James Watt, or to recount 
the glorious names in philosophy, in history, in poetry 
and romance., and in every department of science, which, 
since the middle of the eighteenth century, have made the 
country of Burns and Scott, of Hume and Adam Smith, 
of Black and Hunter and Hutton and Lyell, illustrious 



192 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

for all future time." 1 Back of, and causing, all these 
splendid developments were the parish and burg schools 
that date from John Knox. Renan may have overstated 
the truth when he said the German Universities conquered 
at Sedan; but men recognize that education played a most 
important part in the tremendous war which in 1870- 
1871 considerably changed the map of Europe, and pro- 
foundly affected the adjustment of its political and military 
forces. On the opening of the Paris Exposition two months 
ago, keen observers began at once to study the products 
there exhibited with reference to their educational bear- 
ings. Moreover, they have promptly told us that they 
find clear proof that, in some lines, America is falling into 
the rear. Thus, every day the impression deepens that 
education and schools are essential elements of national 
power and progress. 

Then there are certain divisions of knowledge a fair ac- 
quaintance with which is deemed essential to a well-edu- 
cated man. Reference is not now made to the mere technical 
subjects that are taught in schools, as languages, math- 
ematics, and sciences; but to those more general branches 
of knowledge that constitute what we commonly call 
"general information," and sometimes "fact-lore." Men- 
tion may be made of military history, politics, material 
progress, religion under its doctrinal and institutional 
forms, art, and literature. Now it cannot be denied, 
either that education is a subject of at least equal import- 
ance and dignity with these, or that it is much less under- 
stood. Educational knowledge has never taken rank 
with the other large divisions of knowledge; and, if the 
paradox may be allowed, education is the one great sub- 
ject about which educated men generally are most igno- 

1 The Beginnings of New England, pp. 151, 152. 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 1 93 

rant. This fact is a part of that undervaluation of educa- 
tion which is so patent in the history of civilization. Two 
series of facts will set the general proposition in a clear 
light. 

Intelligent men are almost universally ill-informed con- 
cerning contemporary educational history. Men who can 
give you a particular account of the progress of political 
events in France since 1870, can give you no account 
whatever of the almost equally remarkable series of edu- 
cational events. Americans understand German schools 
and education better than those of any other foreign 
country; and yet with the exception of a small number 
of cultured men this understanding is extremely vague 
and general. Men in numbers can explain, with much 
fullness and accuracy, that wonderful complex of preced- 
ents, documents, and institutions which make up the Eng- 
lish constitution, who know nothing of England in an 
educational aspect beyond the bare fact that Oxford and 
Cambridge are its great Universities. 

Nor do we find a happier state of things when we 
change from contemporary to historical events. Here, 
however, it must be confessed that the materials of infor- 
mation are not easy of access. The man who has never 
read the common books of history with the point in 
mind, can poorly appreciate their barrenness of such mate- 
rials. One dependent solely upon these sources of infor- 
mation would hardly get the idea that there were schools 
and teachers in antiquity, or that they have been of much 
consequence in modern times. He will search the copious 
indexes of Grote's, Thirlwall's, and Curtius' histories of 
Greece in vain for the words "teacher," "school," 
"study," and "education." Merivale and Mommsen do 
better. Some very interesting views of Roman education 
are found in their works, but by no means the full views 



194 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

that the student of educational history desires. Macaulay 
said the historian of England should be a combination of 
Henry Hallam and Sir Walter Scott. He introduced into 
his History — for example, into the celebrated third chapter 
— much material that writers before him had despised and 
neglected, thus imitating the artist mentioned by himself 
who made the most beautiful window in the Cathedral of 
Lincoln out of bits of glass that his fellow-workmen had 
cast aside. And yet Macaulay did nothing for the history 
of education beyond some accounts of the universities, 
and a half-page devoted to female education at the Restor- 
ation. Mr. J. R. Green, as he says in his preface, 
strives to keep his book from sinking into a drum-and- 
trumpet history. He gives more space to Chaucer than 
to Crecy, to Caxton's press than to the Yorkist and Lan- 
castrian strifes, to the rise of Methodism than to the 
Young Pretender; and still, except some interesting views 
of the universities and the sentence, "The Sunday schools 
established by Mr. Raikes, of Gloucester, at the close of 
the [eighteenth] century, were the beginnings of popular 
education," I recall nothing in his "Short History," or 
in its later expansion, directly touching the education of 
the English people. Mr. Lecky does a little better; in 
his sixth volume he gives between two and three pages to 
popular education — which is just twice the amount of 
space that he gives to the introduction of the umbrella 
into England. I know of no history of England that 
gives any account whatever of the ancient grammar 
schools, or of the great public schools, which are such 
important factors in the civilization of the country. 
Even when full allowance has been made for the former 
feeble state of education, and particularly public educa- 
tion, such remissness as this is inexcusable. Apparently, 
war and politics are still themes so attractive as to draw 



CULTURE VALUE OF THE HISTORY OF EDUCATION. 1 95 

the attention of historians from such a splendid theme as 
national education. 

Finally, to guard against possible misapprehension a 
few words of caution. It may be said that my programme 
is too ambitious; that interesting and important as are the 
facts and problems presented, they belong to the history 
of civilization or philosophy rather than education; that 
they lie above the level of normal -school, or even of col- 
lege and university teaching; and that they have more 
interest and value for the philosopher and the historian 
of philosophy than for the practical teacher and school 
officer. This view is not without truth. I have sought 
to assign to Education her proper place in the family of 
philosophical studies. No doubt my programme is not at 
present fully attainable in even our best equipped univer- 
sities. At the same time, this programme should be kept 
in view as an ideal. No doubt the professor of the his- 
tory of education must not allow his instruction to evap- 
orate in philosophical speculations; he must remember our 
practical aims, and especially our practical needs; he 
must keep the teacher's schoolroom and the superinten- 
dent's office constantly in view. But if he is wise, he will 
at all times push his own studies along the higher levels 
of the subject; he will present his facts in the light of 
reason; he will be philosophical as well as pragmatical, 
and will not fail to connect educational facts and prob- 
lems with the important philosophical, social, scientific, 
and religious facts and problems with which they are 
so closely bound up. If at all fit to occupy his chair, 
the professor will understand that there are two classes of 
elements in the practice of education — the temporary and 
the permanent, the necessary and the contingent; by an- 
alysis he will separate these classes of elements one from the 
other; and he will so establish his pupils in this distinction 



196 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

that they will not be apt to follow noisy educational proph- 
ets who, losing sight of it, either fall into utter charla- 
tanry, or so exaggerate some elements of education as to 
make the whole product monstrous. The teacher of the 
history of education is the man to establish in the minds 
of those fitting to teach a proper educational perspective. 








IX. 

THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 1 

O person can successfully teach any subject 
who has not clear and correct ideas of the 
ends that he should seek to gain. As this re- 
mark is a particular application of the truism 
that no man can do a thing well without knowing what he 
wants to do, insistence upon it may be thought super- 
fluous. Such, however, is not the fact, and I shall give 
it the emphasis of two or three paragraphs. 

A teacher may undoubtedly teach well the instrumental 
studies in their earlier stages without grasping their whole 
significance. He deals largely with mechanical pro- 
cesses, physical and mental. It is indeed desirable, since 
the mechanical and rational elements of education finally 
blend in perfect unity, that the primary teacher should 
grasp the ultimate end of these educational arts, but we 
cannot insist upon it as absolutely essential. He will not, 
however, be successful unless he sees distinctly the im- 
mediate objects to which the work leads. What reading 
is, and why it is taught, are questions that he must be able 
to answer. And so of writing, number, and drawing. 
Much more as the mechanical stages of these arts are left 
behind, must the teacher consciously grasp their higher 
uses. 

With some qualification these remarks may be repeated 
with respect to the non- instrumental studies. It is not 

1 An address delivered before the Normal Department of the 
National Educational Association, Toronto, Canada, July, 1891, 

197 



I98 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

strictly necessary that the teacher who deals mainly with 
the facts of geography, history, literature, or science, 
rather than with their interpretation, should fully per- 
ceive their higher elements and objects. Even here, 
however, such insight is more desirable than at the cor- 
responding stage of reading and writing, for the work is 
less mechanical and more rational. In fact, all that the 
phrases "mechanical stage" and "rational stage of educa- 
tion' ' mean is, that in the first we throw the emphasis 
upon the empirical elements, while in the second we throw 
it upon the philosophical elements; first in respect to par- 
ticular studies, and then in respect to education as a whole. 
Furthermore, while studies differ widely in the ratio 
existing between facts and principles, and the same study 
in the ratio of these elements at different stages, there is 
no study, and no stage of any study, that is wholly lack- 
ing in either. Still more, as the teaching of the non- 
instrumental studies recedes from the matter-of-fact stage, 
as now defined, the teacher must fully discern the final 
reasons of his work and be guided by them. He must 
feel the force of the philosopher's beatitude, "Happy is 
he who knows the causes of things. ' ' 

What has now been said is very well summed up in the 
words of Dr. Arnold: "It is clear that in whatever it is 
our duty to act, those matters also it is our duty to 
study." 

I. The Fundamental Facts of Education. — The first of 
these is the mind itself. The mind is capable of activity, 
of self- activity; through its- activity it grows, increases, 
enlarges; while it is one, and has no parts, it is capable of 
acting in different spheres, and through these activities its 
powers or faculties are developed. This enlargement or 
increase of the mind is what we mean by education when 



THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 1 99 

we properly understand ourselves. Once more, the mind 
cannot act, and so cannot enlarge or become educated, if it 
is merely left to itself. Hence the second fundamental 
fact of education is the world or knowledge. Nature first 
sets the mind in motion, and so incites its growth or edu- 
cation; afterwards the same results are produced by the 
mind's own states and affections. However, until the 
relation of contact between the mind and the world or 
knowledge is established, there is no mental activity, and 
so of course no education; but the moment such contact 
is established activity begins and education takes its rise. 
Accordingly, the third fundamental fact is the mind and 
the world, or knowledge, in relation. 

These fundamental facts the teacher must firmly and 
clearly grasp, because they bound his province as a 
teacher. 

II. The Teacher's Function. — In the strict sense of the 
word, the teacher's function, as an instructor, is deter- 
mined by the relation of knowledge to the mind. How 
to use knowledge, or rather how to cause the pupil to use 
knowledge, in such a way as to promote proper mental 
growth, or education, is the central question of the 
teacher's art. As a former of minds, he has no duty 
to perform that is not included in this generalization. 
That the teacher may successfully prosecute his art, 
he must know: — 

1. The activities of the mind, their nature and rela- 
tions, and their respective values as determined by the 
facts of life, individual and social; or, in other words, he 
must have an educational ideal. 

2. The varieties of knowledge (or, as Bacon calls 
them, the " knowledges ") and their power to stimulate 
and form the mind, in respect both to quantity and quality; 



200 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

or he must have worked out, partially at least, the problem 
of educational values. 1 The person who has this knowl- 
edge, conjoined with skill in bringing knowledge and the 
mind into vital relation, can successfully discharge the 
function of a teacher; and only such person can do so. 

III. The Two Aspects of Knowledge. — The foregoing 
analysis makes apparent .the fact that knowledge, or 
studies, must be considered from two standpoints, the 
academical and the pedagogical. 

1 Perhaps a pregnant passage in Lord Bacon' s essay ' ' Of 
Studies" has had more to do with suggesting the term "educa- 
tional values" than any other in literature. "Histories make 
men wise; poets witty; the mdthematicks subtill; Natur all Philo- 
sophy deepe; Morall Grave; Logick and Rhetotick Able to Con- 
tend. Abeunt studia in moras. Nay, ther is no Stond or 
Impediment in the Wit, but may be wrought out by Fit Studies. 
Like as Diseases of the body may have Appropriate Exercises. 
Bowling is good for the Stone and Reines; Shooting for the Lungs 
and Breast; GentleWalkingfortheStomacke; Riding for the Head; 
And the like. So if a Man's Wit be Wandering, let him Study 
the Mathematicks; for in demonstrations, if his Wit be called 
away never so little, he must begin again. If his Wit be not apt 
to distinguish or find differences let him Study the Schoolmen; 
for they are Cymini sectores. If he be not apt to beat over mat- 
ters^ and to call up one Thing, to Prove and Illustrate another, 
let him Study the Lawyers' 1 Cases. So every Defect of the Minde 
may have a Speciall Receitt." 

Dr. James Ward remarks that a threefold analogy seems to 
underlie the phrase "educational values '' ; studies may be regarded 
as exercise, as medicine, or as food. The two first he finds com- 
bined in the above passage from Bacon, which he quotes, but he 
thinks that the third analogy more directly suggests the word 
"value." "Physiological text-books," he says, "have famil- 
iarized us with tables exhibiting the respective values of fat and 
lean, sugar, starch, etc., for sustenance of brain or muscle, for 
maintaining warmth, preventing fatigue, and so on." The three- 
fold analogy suggests ' ' mental dietetics, mental gymnastics, and 
mental therapeutics, " 



THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 201 

The academical point of view is the one occupied 
by the pupil in the school and the scholar in the world. 
Such person is profited by knowledge in two ways; his 
mind is formed and informed by it, and in this way he is 
made ready for the work of life. The general scholar or 
the common man has no special reason for studying 
knowledge with reference to its forming and informing 
powers, or to inquire carefully into the ways in which it 
shall be applied to educational uses. 

The professional or pedagogical point of view is 
the one occupied by the teacher or other person interested 
in the philosophy of education. As already implied, it 
includes in its inventory the following elements: The 
activities of the mind; the relations of different kinds of 
knowledge to these activities; the discovery or invention 
of methods whereby mind and knowledge may be brought 
into due relation; that is, methods of teaching. These 
questions bring before us the whole rationale of forming 
and informing the mind, in so far as the teacher's art is 
concerned with it; in other words, the science and the 
art of teaching. 

IV. The Distributio7i of Emphasis. — Both of these ways 
of looking at knowledge may be emphasized, or either one 
may be emphasized to the partial exclusion of the other. 
The placing of disproportionate emphasis on the one or 
the other is well illustrated by the divergent tendencies of 
college and university teachers, on the one hand, and of 
common-school and normal teachers, on the other. 

Active college men cultivate knowledge and learning; 
they belong to the various associations and societies look- 
ing to those objects; but as a class they take little interest 
in the science and the art of teaching. They give a 



202 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

minimum of attention to the reflective or scientific side of 
the profession that they follow. They are not much inter- 
ested in teachers' associations and meetings, and often 
look upon them with ill-concealed contempt. They are 
prone to deny that there is a science of teaching, and 
sometimes say that education has no history worth study- 
ing. Some of them look askance upon the new chairs of 
pedagogics in the universities and colleges, and a few 
oppose to them an active resistance. "What literature 
is there for him to teach ? ' ' was once asked in a prom- 
inent university when it was proposed to add to the 
faculty a professor of the science and the art of teaching. 
That college teaching suffers severely in consequence of 
this neglect of the teaching art, does not admit of question. 
Common-school and normal teachers lay more stress 
than college professors on the professional factors of edu- 
cation. Why, I need not inquire; the fact is unmistaka- 
ble. They make up a large majority of the great arm y 
that attend meetings like the present one. They carry on 
most of the discussion relating to teaching. Indeed, if 
our educational associations should lose the support of 
these teachers there are few of them that would not 
perish at once. But, on the other hand, these teachers are 
much less prominent and active than college professors in 
the field of learning and investigation. One reason of this 
is, that if such a teacher begins to attract attention in these 
fields he is pretty apt to be called into college or university 
work; but I suspect that few of them are identified with 
the learned or scientific societies of the country. Common- 
school teachers are relatively over-absorbed in the technics 
of their work, which suffers seriously in consequence. 

Now that the teacher should be deeply interested in both 
the academical and professional aspects of teaching, or 



THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 203 

that both sides of his preparation need to be suitably em- 
phasized, becomes demonstrably certain when we consider 
the relations existing between the two. The following 
points may be noted: — 

1. Academical preparation is not sufficient. Knowl- 
edge cannot be mechanically deposited by one person in 
the mind of another, or mental power be similarly trans- 
ferred. The mind has its own laws of growth, like a 
plant or an animal, which must be regarded. Horace 
Mann once said that children love knowledge as naturally 
as they love honey; and to the objection that some do not 
appear to do so, he replied that neither would they like 
honey if it were poured into their ears. Hurling facts at 
children's heads, or piling up knowledge on the table, is 
not teaching. It is well known that great scholars are 
sometimes very poor teachers. They either have no native 
aptitude for teaching, or they have neglected the cultiva- 
tion of their art. But it is important to observe that pri- 
mary teaching is a more delicate art than college teaching. 
Young pupils have almost no power to organize knowl- 
edge, whereas advanced students can re-sort and rearrange 
masses of material that are cast before them. Feeding an 
infant is a more delicate operation than feeding a giant. 
Were the majority of primary teachers such bunglers as 
many college professors are, they would soon be relegated 
to other spheres of usefulness. 

2. Academical preparation must precede professional. 
This arises from the nature of the case. The rationale of 
no subject can be taught before the subject itself is meas- 
urably understood. Neither special methods nor general 
methods can be taught successfully until the pupil has a 
good academic education. The what must come before the 
how. Hence the effort to superinduce a professional edu- 
cation for teaching upon an unorganized or ill-informed 



204 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

mind must end in an ignominous failure. The rent in the 
old garment is made worse by sewing in a patch of new 
cloth. 

At this point great mistakes have been made, and 
are still sometimes made. For example, Pestalozzi held 
that a teacher who had mastered the method could teach 
a branch of knowledge that he did not understand. To 
me this is the pardox of educational history, since the 
whole trend of Pestalozzi' s thinking was away from 
mechanism and toward spirit and freedom; and I can 
explain it only by referring it to that enthusiasm for a 
favorite idea which sometimes runs into fanaticism. The 
great Reformer's own scholarship, it will be remembered, 
was slender, while he dealt almost wholly with young and 
immature minds. But Pestalozzi is not the only man who 
has made this mistake. The idea appears to prevail in 
some quarters even now that a person can ho. fitted out with 
a kit of tools that will enable him to teach, no matter 
whether he knows much or not. 

Teaching is bringing knowledge into due relation with 
the mind. Something must be brought. In abstract 
knowledge we deal with forms of thought; but teach- 
ing is not a matter of form or thought-skins, of going 
through motions or following rubrics. Forms stand to 
thought in some such relation as grape-skins to grapes, 
and are no more nutritious. Teaching is spreading no 
Barmecide table. Then too much is often made of the 
experience argument. At least experience is often mis- 
understood. It is not mere number of days or years spent 
in the service. Not a few teachers have I known who 
were incapacitated for good teaching by their very ' ' expe- 
rience. ' ' Their minds had become circles closed to all new 
ideas and inspirations and glazed over with uniformity and 
self-complacency. If you start out on the wrong road, the 



THE TEACHER'S PREPARATION. 205 

longer and faster you walk the farther you are from your 
destination. 

But if either factor must be slighted, which one shall 
it be? Which is better, much scholarship and little 
method, or little scholarship and much method? The 
answer to this question cannot for a moment be held in 
doubt. Both theory and experience declare for scholar- 
ship. In fact, the enthusiasm of knowledge is a prime 
requisite of the best teaching. Few school spectacles are 
more painful than that of a poor teacher eking out slender 
learning with an excess of method. The good scholar 
without professional training will commonly stagger 
more or less at first, but, if he have the root of the matter 
in him, he will find his feet; while the teacher of an 
ill-organized mind and small equipment gives little promise 
of ever overcoming his limitations. The what will catch 
the how long before the how will overtake the what And 
this is why all sound educators plead for the improvement 
of the academical equipment of the teachers of the country. 



f 



X. 

HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 1 

HE Report of the Conference on History, Civil 
Government, and Political Economy, made to 
the Committee of Ten, is a document of forty 
octavo pages, the foundation of which is com- 
posed of some thirty-five resolutions that were carefully 
elaborated by the distinguished scholars and teachers who 
composed the Conference, while the superstructure is built 
up by a careful exposition of these resolutions, and their 
enforcement by appropriate arguments, the whole consti- 
tuting a solid and valuable body of pedagogical doctrine. 
Merely to summarize this Report and to comment on its 
salient features, would perhaps hardly meet the expecta- 
tions of the hour. So I shall take up the subject de novo, 
making such references to the Report as will conduce to 
the stronger presentation of my own ideas. I shall begin 
with assigning to history its proper place in a full scheme 
of education. 

That expansion or growth of the human mind which 
we call education, originates in the contact of the mind 
itself with facts or objects of knowledge. We are not 
here concerned with the speculative aspects of this sub- 
ject; but we must emphasize the fact that all mental 

] A paper read before the Department of Superintendence of 
the National Educational Association, at Cleveland, O., February, 
1895. The full caption of the paper on the programme was : 
" History Teaching in Schools, with some Reference to the Report 
of the Conference on History to the Committee of Ten." 

206 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 2O7 

activity — the whole train of cognition, feeling, and will — 
has its rise in the establishment of such points of contact. 
Potent as the mind is, it cannot act, and so cannot make 
increase, in vacuum. These facts or objects of knowledge 
are divisible into three classes, the facts of Nature, the 
facts of Society, and the facts of the Mind itself. These 
are the primordial agents or factors of human cultivation, 
as seen both in individual history and in race history. In 
both spheres, they antedate teachers and schools and edu- 
cation, as these terms are commonly understood. In the 
attrition of the mind with natural facts, originates natural 
science; in attrition with social facts, social and moral 
science; and in attrition with mental facts, mental science. 
To define the relations of these several groups of factors, 
and their comparative values, is beside the present pur- 
pose, except to say that, for the most part, they run side 
by side through the conscious life; that their interaction is 
constant and powerful, although not uniform in different 
persons or in different periods of the individual life; and 
that they are all essential in something like relative 
measure to a well developed mind. 

These primordial agents of human cultivation are 
powerfully re-enforced by a secondary group. As the 
first men and women acquired experience through attri- 
tion with the worlds of nature, of society, and of the 
spirit, they imparted to one another what they had learned, 
and thus taught one another. Ex hypothesis up to this 
time all knowledge had come from original sources; 
henceforth second-hand, or derivative, knowledge, and so 
tradition and authority, play their part. So we are led to 
analyze the group of secondary factors. First in time and 
in power, comes spoken language or oral tradition; then 
follow material monuments of various kinds; next come 
symbols, including the rude art of the savage, picture 



208 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

writing, and the Parthenon frieze, and last of all writing 
and its corollary, printing. These last factors of culti- 
vation are plainly derivative; they mean nothing save as 
they rest upon a previous culture. Their relations to one 
another, and to the primary factors, do not here concern 
us, beyond the observation that there has been a ten- 
dency, and particularly since the invention of movable 
types, to exaggerate the fourth division of the secondary 
group. 

Avoiding all the questions that are suggested by 
the words "humanism,' "classicism," "realism," and 
' 'naturalism, ' ' let us fix the location of history in the chart 
of human culture. First, however, the Father of History 
wrote his immortal book, as he says, that the actions 
of men might not be effaced by time, nor the wondrous 
deeds of the Greeks and the Barbarians be forgotten. He 
has thus defined in a general way the field of history: it 
is the field of the actions or deeds of men. But what 
actions or deeds does it embrace ? Shunning the various 
controversies that a detailed answer would perhaps excite, 
let us say that history is the story of man's more serious 
and valuable experience in the most important spheres of 
his activity — in politics, war, religion, art, industrial 
achievement, education, scientific discovery, and moral 
endeavor; and that its sources go back to every one of the 
secondary agents of education — tradition, monuments, 
symbolism , and the written page . Seizing first those actions 
of men that constitute the body of history, the student 
rests not until he has discovered the spiritual elements out 
of which these actions have sprung. History is therefore 
philosophy teaching by examples. Bven Froude, who 
scorned both the science and the philosophy of history, 
and said it was but a drama, admitted that it does teach 
the difference between right and wrong. And when this 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 209 

much is said, what need be added to show its high educa- 
tional value ? History is one of the main channels through 
which the experience of the race is communicated to us; 
and to ask whether it is worth while to pay attention to 
what it conveys, is to ask whether it is worth while to 
defer to experience at all. If it is profitable to study the 
formation of crystals, the hatching of eggs, the germina- 
tion and growth of seeds, and the surrounding social en- 
vironment, a fortiore is it profitable to study the evolution 
of humanity from its lowest to its highest forms. As in 
the lower sphere of life man cannot reach his ends when 
cut off from association with men, so he cannot meet the 
ends of the higher sphere when cut off from the past. 

Having thus assigned to history its place in the circle 
of educational agents, I do not think that it is necessary 
to insist, point by point, that it trains the memory, stimu- 
lates the imagination, furnishes guiding knowledge, and 
cultivates the faculties of reason. But I would observe, 
with Bishop Stubbs, that history is a great school of the 
judgment; and all the more valuable because it deals with 
moral or probable elements, or just such elements as the 
pupil now encounters in the home, the school, and the 
church, and just such elements as he will encounter in 
the town meeting, on 'change, in legislative halls, and in 
administrative offices. ' ' If you would understand his- 
tory," said Charles Kingsley, "study men." How 
desirable it is that all persons in public life, and especi- 
ally educators in every sphere, should be trained in 
this great school! In any active political community, the 
study of the history of a similar community is the study of 
real life; and it fits the student for practical affairs in as 
real a sense as work in a biological laboratory fits him for 
the study of animated nature. 



2IO STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The views presented are also conclusive on another 
point, viz: that the subject of history should receive more 
attention than at present in the schools. The only open 
question is, How much more? The Conference on 
History declares in resolution 1, that history and kindred 
subjects should be a substantial school study in each one of 
eight school years; in resolution 2, that this work should 
be consecutive; while the amounts of time recommended in 
resolutions 14, 16, 17, to be set apart to the various divi- 
sions of the subject, are not less than three forty-minute 
periods throughout the eight years, or a total of about 
nine hundred exercises in all. Moreover, the Conference 
urges that this total shall be equally divided between the 
grammar school and the high school. The Committee of 
Ten, dealing with high schools only, fails to meet the 
views of the Conference in both the main points. In its 
model classical course it puts four periods a week in the 
first year, three in the second year, none in the third year, 
and only offers three in the fourth year as an alternative 
for mathematics. In the Latin and Scientific course the 
assignment is four periods the first year, none the second, 
two the third, and the same alternative the fourth as in 
the Classical course. These requirements the Modern 
Language course merely duplicates. In the English 
course history fares better. Four periods are given it in 
the first year, three the second, four the third, and three 
the fourth. The minimum is a total of six periods, or 
about two hundred and forty exercises; the maximum 
fourteen periods, or about five hundred and sixty 
exercises. We need not suppose that the failure of the 
Committee to meet the views of the Conference is a case 
of loving Caesar less or Rome more, but a case of finding 
suitable room for all the studies that it felt bound to 
accommodate. The superintendent of schools also is 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 211 

quite certain to demand of the Conference where he is to 
find time for nine hundred exercises in history. Into 
these questions of detail it is less important now to enter 
than it is to insist that more time shall be found for the 
subject, even at the cost of reducing somewhat the time 
accorded to other subjects. Asked to name what subjects, 
I should say, — in the grammar school, arithmetic and 
geography; in the high school, mathematics, language, 
and physical science. This, be it observed again, in case 
it is necessary. 

At what stage of his school life should the pupil be 
introduced to history ? The reply of the Conference is, 
at the beginning of the fifth year. My own reply is, at 
the beginning of the first year. On this point the practice 
of the Herbartian pedagogists is in the main correct. I am 
not now particular to inquire whether or not ' 'the material 
for the instruction that is to mould character should be 
sought in the development of the national culture, which 
is to be followed in its chief epochs ;" or whether Gesun- 
nungs-Stoff should control education in its early stages; 
or whether ' ' history and literature naturally constitute 
the core of concentration;" or, indeed, whether, in the 
Herbartian sense, there is such a core. It answers my 
purpose to insist upon the introduction of history into the 
first year of the school, and upon its continuance to the 
end thereof. Perhaps it would be difficult to arrange for 
a German child a better introduction to the subject than 
Ziller's double historical series, irrespective of the theo- 
retical views that lie back of it. This is the series: 

First year, Grimm's Fairy Tales; second year, Robinson Crusoe; 
third year, (1) Bible Stories from the time of the Patriarchs, (2) 
Legends of Thuringia; fourth year, (1) Bible Stories from the 
time of the Judges, then of the Kings, (2) Niebelungen Tales; 
fifth year, (1) Bible Stories from the time of Christ, (2) History of 



21 a STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Henry I, Otto I, Charlemagne; sixth year, (1) Bible Stories from 
the time of Christ continued, (2) Migration of the Nations, Roman 
Empire and the Popes, the Crusades, the Middle Ages, Rudolf 
von Hapsburg; seventh year, (1) the Original Congregations of 
Churches and the Apostle Paul, (2) Discovery of America and its 
first settlement, history of the Reformation, the Thirty Years' 
War; eighth year, (1) Instruction in the Catechism, (2) Frederick 
the Great, the Napoleonic Wars for Independence, the Restoration 
of the German Empire. 1 

Around this core all other instruction is grouped. 
One reason for making such large use of the Bible, is 
the fact that Biblical history is everywhere taught in the 
German schools. 

When the child comes to school, at the age of six years, 
he is eager for stories, perhaps for the reason that their 
soul is activity, of which he is so fond; stories are congru- 
ous with his reading and language lessons, and with the 
books that he learns to read outside of school; while they 
may be so chosen that they shall convey valuable content, 
furnishing the very stuff that the child both wants and 
needs. Furthermore, what is the story but a simple form 
of history? Some etymological accident made "story" 
by knocking a syllable off from "history." Story and 
history are but earlier and later forms of tradition, and 
at first they differed only in the kind of language in 
which they were told. In time history assumed a more 
dignified form; but in Herodotus the early form is very 
observable, while it is still common to call the masters of 
historical narration great story-tellers. It is not a conceit 
to say that there is a striking parallelism between the 
development of historical knowledge in the individual and 
the development of historical art. The child listening to 
nurse's tale or old wife's fable, the child pouring over his 
book of stories, full of incident and adventure, and the 

1 De Garmo: Herbart and the Herbartians, pp. 119, 120. 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 



213 



child studying his book of formal history travels in a few 
years that long road the three sections of which are 
marked in history by oral tradition, by such writings as 
those of Herodotus, L4vy, and Froissart, and by the pro- 
found works of Thucydides, Tacitus, and Polybius. Now 
it is more than probable that the members of the Confer- 
ence on History would agree to all that I am saying, with 
the proviso that they do not call tales history. But I should 
reply that, pedagogically speaking, there is no qualita- 
tive difference between them; and that you can no more 
separative the three periods in the child's life sharply than 
you can separate them sharply in the history of the race. 
Still, I am not sure that the Conference would meet my 
views, because it makes no mention of either biography 
or mythology until the beginning of the fifth school grade. 

What shall be the range of the work attempted ? What 
the subjects chosen? The Conference answers with the 
following programme: 1 — 

First year. — Biography and mythology. 

Second year. — Biography and mythology. 

Third year. — American history and elements of civil govern- 
ment. 



! It was not mentioned in this paper, as no doubt it should have 
been, that the Conference also framed an alternative six-year 
course for schools which are not able to support the longer pro- 
gramme, viz: 

First year. — Biography and mythology. 

Second year. — Biography and mythology. [In the intervening 
year or years, if any, historical reading should be pursued as a 
part of language study.] 

Third year. — American history and civil government. [At this 
point the pupil would naturally enter the high school.] 

Fourth year. — Greek and Roman history, with their Oriental 
connections. 

Fifth year. — English history. [To be so taught as to elucidate 
the general movement of medieval and modern history.] 

Sixth year. — American history and civil government. 



214 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Fourth year. — Greek and Roman history, with their Oriental 
connections. [At this point the pupil would naturally enter the 
high school.] 

Fifth year. — French history. [To be so taught as to elucidate 
the general movement of medieval and modern history.] 

Sixth year. — English history. [To be so taught as to elucidate 
the general movement of medieval and modern history. ] 

Seventh year. — American history. 

Eighth year. — A special period, studied in an intensive manner, 
and civil government. 

Before commenting on this scheme, I wish to present the 
one that is followed in the elementary schools of Baden, 
Germany: — 

First year (third grade). Historical tales related by the teacher 
and repeated by the pupils several times. 

Second and third years (fourth and fifth grades). Historical 
tales continued, their number augmented. Brief outline of the 
history of the village or town and the district, the latter connected 
with the geography of the district. Short biographies of national 
heroes. 

Fourth year (sixth grade). Brief outline of Grecian and Roman 
history. Several parts dealt with in a more detailed way; e. g., the 
Persian wars. Alexander the Great, the wars between the Romans 
and Germans, the invasion of the Barbarians. Historical com- 
positions embracing both biographies and tales. Historical essays 
in the reading-book, read and explained. 

Fifth year (seventh grade). History of the Middle Ages in 
Germany, dealt with in the same way as the ancient history in the 
fourth year. Much stress laid upon the Crusades and the end of the 
Middle Ages. Historical tales, biographies, essays in the reading- 
book as in the fourth year. 

Sixth year (eighth grade). Modern times, especially in Ger- 
many. History of the Thirty Years' War, the Seven Years' War, 
the wars against Napoleon, and the war of 1870-71 dealt with in a 
complete manner. History of France from 1648 to 1815, chiefly 
the French Revolution, Tales, biographies, essays continued; 
longer compositions (the pupils') than previously. 

In teaching history, no text-book is used; only oral instruction 
by the teacher, and a few notes taken by the pupils. 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 215 

This programme suggests one important point of differ- 
ence between German and American history. Germany 
has long lain directly in the main stream of the world- 
movement, while America from the beginning has lain 
outside of this stream. German history is primarily a 
part of general history, while American history is such 
only in a secondary degree. The German pupil estab- 
lishes his historical connections with the world-movement 
directly, the American pupil only by the way of England. 
Then, historically, as well as geographically, the German 
is much nearer to Greece and Rome. To a great extent the 
German's study of Italy or France is a study of Germany 
itself, but in our case this is true only to a limited degree. 
The result is that the German pupil makes the transition 
from national history to general history far more easily 
than the American. This view of the subject is little 
likely to be questioned. It is here presented as a reason 
for questioning the wisdom of introducing Greek and 
Roman history, with their Oriental connections, at least 
as a formal study, into the grammar school. It must be 
remembered that the typical pupil of fourteen years of 
age is not very mature in mind. Besides, it may well be 
doubted also whether, if foreign history is to be intro- 
duced into the grammar school, it would not be better to 
introduce portions of English history. I cannot think 
the German example at this point is a safe one to follow. 
But while I have serious doubts about the formal study of 
Greece and Rome at this stage of progress, I have none 
whatever about bringing in, not merely the fable, the 
myth, and the -legend found in Homer and Virgil, but 
also the biographies of the Grecian and Roman heroes and 
sages. Can we not rehabilitate Plutarch, and if we can, 
would it not be worth more to our youth than such formal 
study of Grecian and Roman history as would be possi- 



2l6 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ble, no matter whether he goes to the high school or at 
once to active life ? 

It should be observed, also, that the German programme 
says nothing directly about the Orient, and that the 
American programme only mentions its connections with 
Greece and Rome. To be sure, nobody knows very 
definitely what their early ' ' connections ' ' were, but I 
assume that the conference would not go back of the great 
struggle between Persia and Greece. Everybody should 
have a general knowledge of the Hebrew Bible ; but 
beyond this we should not, in general education, concern 
ourselves with Asia until we reach the epoch across 
which are written in letters of light the names Marathon, 
Thermopylae, Salamis, Platea. For practical purposes, 
outside of religion, we may regard general history as 
beginning with Greece. Whatever one may think of 
some of Dr. Freeman's historical theories, he will hardly 
dissent from these words in respect to Greece: 

The Greeks, with their many small states, were the first 
people from whom we can learn any lessons in the art of politics, 
the art of ruling and pursuing men according to law. The little 
commonwealths of Greece were the first states at once free and 
civilized which the world ever saw. They were the first states 
which gave birth to great statesmen, orators, and generals, who 
did great deeds, and to great historians, who set down those great 
deeds in writing. It was in the Greek commonwealths, in short, 
that the political and intellectual life of the world began. x 

Or from these words in respect to Rome : 

The nations which have stood out foremost among all have 
been the Greeks, the Romans, and the Teutons. And among 
these it is the Romans who formed the center of the whole story. 
Rome alone founded a universal empire, in which all earlier 
history loses itself and out of which all later history grew. 2 

1 General Sketch of History, pp, 21, 22. 
2 Ibid, pp. 16, 17. 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 21 7 

On one point that the Conference has touched, I wish 
to utter no uncertain sound. The "acquirements of a 
body of useful facts ' ' is pronounced ■ ' the most difficult 
and the least important outcome of historical study." 
The principal end of history in the schools, as of all 
education, is declared to be the training of the mind. To 
these expressions, properly understood, there can be no 
rational ob j ection . Still , they seem to ring of the venerable 
dogma of formal discipline. They seem almost to suggest 
that profitable historical study can be carried on without 
the acquirement of a body of useful facts. While it is 
true that the acquisition of facts and real mental training 
are not necessarily measures each of the other, still they 
cannot be wholly separated, and in good teaching they 
are not separated at all. The mind cannot be disciplined 
by nothing; it works only as it works upon something. 
For one, I stand much in fear that the facts taught 
in the schools will not be well chosen, and that they will 
not be well taught ; but, waiving these two points, I have 
no fear that too many facts will be taught, unless, indeed, 
the subject is allowed to encroach upon other subjects. To 
suppose that too many facts will be taught, is to suppose 
that too much history will be taught. However, I have no 
good word to say for the old-fashioned memoriter method, 
and cheerfully grant that the facts are only a means to 
an end. 

At this point I wish to read, with some comments of 
my own, a statement recently made by Professor H. 
Morse Stephens, who came the last year from Oxford to 
teach European history at Cornell University. 

Professor Morse Stephens, Cornell's new Professor of Euro- 
pean History from Oxford, has made some interesting compari- 
sons between English and American college students. He con- 
cludes that the average American undergraduate takes a more 



2l8 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

comprehensive view of history, has a better grasp of its essential 
facts, and surpasses his English cousin of corresponding grade in 
power of generalization; but the American student is lamentably 
deficient in his knowledge of details and also writes very poor 
English. Professor Stephens thought the essays written by his 
undergraduate students at Cornell were on the whole better than 
similar essays written by English students at Cambridge, although 
he sharply criticised the spelling, grammar, and generally care- 
less style of the Americans. When, however, he set his Ameri- 
can students an examination of twenty questions concerning 
dates and places, he was overwhelmed by the lack of knowledge 
of facts displayed in the answers. More than half of the class 
failed to pass the examination, the average percentage being 
about 40, and as a rule the students who wrote the best essays 
handed in the poorest examination papers. 1 

Competent judges are not likely to question the general 
accuracy of this interesting statement. The explanation 
of the facts stated is found mainly in the aims of English 
and American education, and in the methods of instruc- 
tions that are employed, particularly in the secondary 
schools. First, English teachers lean more on lectures, 
or other oral instruction, and so on writing and note- 
books; American teachers, more on oral recitations and 
on general summaries. One result is that the English 
( boy is trained to spell and write better, and to use more 
correct English, than the American boy. The one is 
methodical and correct in form where the other is dis- 
cursive and slip-shod. But, secondly, the American 
pupil's peculiar discipline gives him comprehensive views 
of a subject, a better grasp of large facts, and a consid- 
erable mastery of generalizations, which have their 
unhappy compensation in a deficient knowledge of details, 
as well as a defective use of English. The American 
pupil is certainly not strong in names and places. The 
natural tendency of the recitation method is here rein- 
1 The Dial, January 16, 1895. 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 2IO, 

forced by the very common disposition on the part of 
teachers to disparage details. A mere fact ! only a date ! 
is the contemptuous phrase with which the careless or 
ignorant teacher often dismisses one of those little 
things that constitute the very staple of history, In some 
quarters it has actually come to be a fashion to disparage 
the man of large information, of full knowledge, regard- 
ing him merely as a patient drudge. It is now common 
to berate the schools for teaching too many facts. Facts 
may possibly be badly taught in the schools, or they may 
be ill chosen; it is not true, however, that American 
pupils are strong in facts, but the contrary. In the third 
place, there can be no doubt that the typical English boy 
who comes up to the University has received a more reg- 
ular, a more systematic, and a more thorough training than 
the typical American boy. Of its kind, he has been taught 
in a better school. Once more, it is an old saying that 
the English mind runs to details rather than to general 
views and philosophical principles. Such is the constant 
charge of the French and German critics. While there 
can be no doubt that the English mind handles an 
enormous amount of fact-material, it may still be doubted 
whether Englishmen are remarkable for a nice accuracy in 
their facts. There is reason to think the contrary. The 
question whether the American student, with his good 
essay and poor examination paper, is better or worse off 
than the English student, with his good examination 
paper and poor essay, is a question that will not here be 
considered; the truth is that measurable excellence should 
be obtained in both exercises. 

Perhaps no part of the Report of the Conference has 
provoked more criticisms than the recommendation in 
respect to the intensive study of some period of history, 



220 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

or some historical subject. It will have been observed 
that such study is found in the schools of Baden. The 
recommendation seems to me a good one, provided time 
can be found to do the work, and provided the phrase 
''intensive study" be understood in a sense sufficiently 
limited or relative. 

Worthy of all praise are the remarks that both the 
Conference and the Committee of Ten have offered on 
the importance of saving time through the better co-ordi- 
nation of subjects. Without entering upon the general 
merits of the doctrine of Concentration, about which we 
are now hearing so much, I wish to say that instruction 
in history, in language and composition, in geography 
and civil government, can be so organized as at once to 
save time and to secure better results than at present. 
These subjects are as congruous as any subjects found in 
the curriculum, and are as capable of close articulation. 

It is not necessary to go with Dr. Freeman in declaring 
that the fields of politics and history are co-extensive, in 
order to find firm ground on which to rest the teaching of 
civil government in the schools. I quote with entire 
approval resolutions 28 and 29 adopted by the Conference: 

That Civil Government in the grammar schools should be 
taught by oral lessons, with the use of collateral text-books, and 
in connection with U. S. History and local geography. 

That Civil Government in the high schools should be taught 
by using a text-book as a basis, with collateral reading and topical 
work, and observation and instruction in the government of the 
city or town and state in which the pupils live, and with compari- 
sons between American and foreign systems of goverment. 

This direct observation and study of the government of 
the city, town, and state is equally important, and even 
more important, in grammar schools; foreign systems of 
government, for the most part, and certainly comparisons 



HISTORY TEACHING IN SCHOOLS. 221 

between them and our own systems, should be deferred 
to the high school. 

The Report closes with the recommendation that only 
teachers who have had adequate special training shall be 
employed to teach history and related subjects. To the 
obvious objection that such teachers are not to be found 
in numbers sufficient to carry out the programme in the 
schools of the country, the Conference would probably 
reply that the teachers can be provided as rapidly as the 
schools can be put in shape to receive them. 

The present subject, as well as several others on the 
programme, has been immediately suggested by the dis- 
cussion that has been going on the last three or four years 
relative to secondary education. In this discussion the 
central questions have been, What studies shall form the 
staple of such education ? and, In what order and pro- 
portion shall they be combined ? Upon only one phase 
of the general subject do I wish to comment. Causes 
that are here wholly irrelevant imposed upon the nations 
of modern Europe a foreign culture conveyed in foreign 
tongues. The ancient classics became, not merely a de- 
partment of study, but practically the field of study. 
The fact was most anomalous. The ancient Jews, who 
certainly proved themselves a tough and enduring nation, 
knew no literature and no history outside of their incom- 
parable Scriptures, which were to them a national litera- 
ture in the best sense of the term, and not merely a book 
of religion. The Greeks, who were the ablest race 
intellectually that the world has seen, were nourished 
exclusively upon a national vernacular culture. Even 
the establishment of the Greek arts in Rome following 
the conquest of Greece, fell far short of the establish- 
ment of the Classical Tradition in breadth and permanency 



222 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

of influence. In recent times the power of this tradition 
has been broken; it is no longer considered necessary that 
an educated man shall study Greek, or even L,atin. Into 
the general merits of the question, I do not propose to go. 
It is unmistakable that there has been a strong drift 
towards modern studies. Has this drift reached its limit ? 
I cannot think so. While trie old humanities will never 
be banished from the schools, they can hardly continue 
to hold relatively even the diminished place that they now 
occupy. Modern studies, and particularly vernacular 
studies, will encroach upon them still more. This fact 
has been very apparent in the discussions of the last three 
years. Moreover, it cannot be reasonably doubted that, 
in the future, increased emphasis will be laid upon the 
national history and literature as a means of forming the 
national mind and character. 




XL 

THE MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAIN- 
ING OF CHILDREN. 1 

F the various contributions that have been 
made to the theory of education in recent 
years, the doctrine of apperception is perhaps 
the most important. This idea was first 
applied to philosophy by I^eibnitz, but its germ is found 
in one of the works of Aristotle. 2 From the time when 
men first began to take note of their own thought-pro- 
cesses, some of them, at least, must have seen more or 
less clearly that we look at the world through ourselves, 
and that what we see, and what we learn, depends in 
great part upon what we already know and are. The 
idea is not therefore really new. Still the German peda- 
gogist Herbart and his disciples have analyzed it so 
much more thoroughly, have defined it so much better, 
and especially have applied it to practice so much more 
fully, that it seems to us almost a new revelation. 

The word "apperceive" is derived from ad, to, andper- 
cepere, to grasp or to clasp. It literally signifies the 

1 An address delivered before the Ohio Christian Missionary 
Society, Columbus, 0.,May, 1895. 

2 "All teaching and learning by way of inference proceed from 
pre-existent knowledge. Of this we maybe satisfied by examina- 
tion of instances: it is thus that the mathematical sciences and the 
arts are acquired; the dialectician's induction and syllogism 
both appeal to previous knowledge, the one of the phenomenon, 
the other of the law: and the orator persuades by example and 
enthymeme, the one a kind of induction, the other of syllogism." 
— The Posterior Analytics. Poste's translation. 

223 



224 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

grasping or clasping of one thing to another, a uniting, 
adhesive process. But the I,atin verb also means to see 
or per cewe\ so that, taken figuratively, apperceive means 
to see or perceive one thing byway of another, or the coales- 
cence of a new idea with an old one by modification. As 
now used by pedagogical writers, the stress is thrown 
upon the element of modification. One distinguished 
writer says apperception is ' 'that psychological activity 
by which individual perceptions, ideas, or idea-complexes 
are brought into relation to our previous intellectual and 
emotional life, assimilated with it and thus raised 
to greater clearness, activity, and significance." 1 A 
second writer, entering into more detail, says that to 
explain apperception we must contrast it with perception. 
' "In perception we have an object presented to our senses, 
but in apperception we identify the object or those features 
of it which were familiar to us before; we recognize it; 
we explain it; we interpret the new by our previous 
knowledge, and thus are enabled to proceed from the 
known to the unknown and make new acquisitions; in 
recognizing the object we classify it under various general 
classes; in identifying it with what we have seen before, 
we note also differences which characterize the new object 
and lead to the definition of new species or varieties. 
. . . By it we re-enforce the perception of the present 
moment by the aggregate of our own past sense-percep- 
tion, and by all that we have learned of the experience 
of mankind." 2 

Viewing the subject thus, we see that the mind is not 
something that is inert and dead; not a sheet of blank 
paper upon which you may write what you please; not a 

1 Dr. L,ange: Apperception, p. 41. 

2 Dr. W. T. Harris: A Text-Book in Psychology, by J. F. Her- 
bart. Translated by Margaret Smith. Editor's Preface. 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 225 

ball of clay or wax to be moulded into any form, but that 
it is rather a self-active principle or energy. It will also 
be seen at once that the processes of learning and teach- 
ing are not to be compared to the operations of a machine, 
but rather to the vital processes of vegetable and animal 
life. An idea touches a new object and changes it into 
its own nature; or, perhaps it would be better to say, a 
new object is set like a scion in the stock of an old idea 
and, through assimilation, becomes an idea itself. It is 
only the "engrafted word" that is able to save the 
soul. 

Some simple illustrations will make these general pro- 
positions fully intelligible. A young child calls every 
man "papa," every woman "mamma," and attributes to 
them the same qualities that he has discovered in his 
father and mother. He says his broken cart is ' 'naughty' ' 
because it will not run, and, assuming that it has life and 
feeling like himself, proceeds to beat it. He feeds his 
big toe with a spoon. One child seeing a picture of a 
serpent called it a tail ; a second called a swan that he 
saw swimming in the water a fish; a third, brought up in 
the South, called snow-flakes when he first saw them 
butterflies; while of two other children who stood looking 
at a pair of mules, one called them horses and the other 
rabbits. Children of a larger growth do the same thing, 
only they learn to be more wary in expressing their first 
ideas. When the Romans first saw elephants they called 
them Lucanian oxen. The man who has most ideas has 
most centers of assimilation, and so can learn most rapidly. 
A botanist sees a hundred things in a pond of water that 
are hidden from the clown; an old traveler is the man 
who finds most in a new country; while only a scholar 
discovers much in a library. Accordingly, it is not strange 
but as natural as natural can be that a conversation, a 



226 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

sermon, or a book is a different thing to different per- 
sons. "What can we see or acquire," asks Emerson, 
' 'but what we are? You have seen a skillful man read- 
ing Virgil. Well, that author is a thousand books to a 
thousand persons. Take the book into your own hands, and 
read your eyes out; you will never find what I find. If 
any ingenious reader would have a monopoly of the wis- 
dom or the light he gets, he is as secure, now that the 
book is Englished, as if it were imprisoned in the Pelew's 
tongue. ' ' 

Thus far the argument has turned on sensible objects. 
But it may turn on objects that are not sensible. The 
images that we first form of mental facts — our primal 
notions of spiritual things; our early views of men and 
life; our original opinions about subjects, — these tend to 
change the facts of our later experience into their own 
image. The mind is subdued to its material and moral 
environment. A late writer has said in dealing with a 
famous French woman who lived at the beginning of this 
century : 

Our earliest impressions of the external world become, 
unconsciously to us, the prism by which everything is afterward 
colored. With Chateaubriand, it was the gloomy solitudes of 
Combourg, the heavy mists, skirting the ocean and bounded only 
by the forests through which the storm winds whistled. With 
Eamartine, it was the hills of Milly, a country home with quiet 
neighboring paths, a soft and filmy sky, a dim and fleeting 
horizon, a pious childhood at a Christian mother's knee. With 
Madame de Stael, it was in private life the scenes of a happy 
home, and in public those of a salon which was the meeting-place 
of the best intellects of the time, — where jest and inspiration 
followed each in turn; where all literary questions and all the 
problems of the universe were discussed, and where, as a contem- 
porary has remarked, they discoursed endlessly upon ' ' the great 
truths of Nature, the immortality of the soul, the love of liberty, 
and the charms and dangers of the passions." A house like her 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 227 

parents' was always her ideal of home; happiness in marriage 
was her Utopia, and to reign over a salon was the ambition of her 
life. 1 

From what has been said some very important practical 
conclusions flow- 

One is that present ignorance is a bar to future intelli- 
gence. Paradoxical as it may sound, a man may be so 
ignorant that he cannot learn, or at least can learn but 
little. It is related that a band of Esquimaux walked 
through the streets of London utterly indifferent to their 
surroundings. " The explanation," observes the writer 
who furnishes the incident, ' ' is simple. These inhabi- 
tants of the frozen North had no store of related predicates 
with which to interpret the wonders about them. We 
have no interest in that for which we have no under- 
standing, no related concepts." 2 

A second conclusion is that one's present ideas and 
feelings, in addition to stimulating his mental activity, 
also tend to shape its character. The idea that a child 
has formed of an object becomes a standard by which he 
compares and measures a new object, and particularly a 
similar object, that is presented to his mind; while the 
feeling that he has associated with one object attaches to 
a new object that resembles the former one. Thus the 
mind, reacting upon environment, forces upon it its own 
view or nature. In so far as the two objects are alike, 
the identification is correct and helpful; in so far as they 
are unlike, it is false and misleading. Still the child 
gains more than he looses; if he were robbed of the power 
of interpreting things through classification, and were com- 
pelled to begin again at the beginning with each new experi- 
ence, his growth in knowledge would be extremely slow. 

1 Sorel: Madame de Stael, p. 7. 

2 DeGarmo: Essentials of Method, p. 30. 



228 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

A third conclusion is that the child should learn through 
experience to correct the false interpretations that he 
tends to force upon surrounding objects. To-day he will 
promptly call a snake a tail or a mule a rabbit, but 
to-morrow he will hesitate, will wait for a fuller view of 
the new object, and so protect himself against his own 
first impression. The laughter that his classifications 
excite tends to put him upon his guard. This is why 
adults are slower than children to refer new experiences 
to the old familiar classes. To promote such hesitation 
— that is, somewhat to check the apperceiving process — 
is a great matter in education. 

Still when all has been done that is possible, this door- 
way through which so many errors enter a man's mind can 
never be closed. His mind may be virgin at first, but 
it soon loses its virginity. His ideas, opinions, and feelings 
are lenses through which he sees everything about him. 
He may accept theoretically the warning of the moralist 
to judge his fellowmen as they are, and of the preacher 
to read the Bible as it is; but practically he looks at men 
and Bible alike through his mental and moral attainments; 
that is, through the sum-total of his culture. He sees 
through a glass darkly, not face to face. What we 
call bias and prejudice are not always, or perhaps com- 
monly, a state of the feelings merely, and they are 
not directly subject to the will. Struggle as he may, a 
man cannot get away from himself. In respect to opinion 
and faith, he can no more throw off his former mental 
habits suddenly than he can cast out his bodily humors. 
All that he can do is to turn new facets of his mind to the 
subject, to view it under new aspects, to search for hidden 
points of contact, to discover grounds of agreement that 
at first are not apparent. And this, no doubt, is a great 
deal. Here appears the advantage that the man of wide 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 229 

knowledge, full experience, and sympathetic spirit has 
over the man who is without these qualities; he is more 
cautious in making up his mind, and is more likely to 
discover truth, beauty, and goodness. The old conception 
of a liberal education was, that through it isolation of the 
spirit is broken down and mental freedom established. 
Such education is called liberal, perhaps because it frees 
or tends to free the mind from its own ignorance and 
narrowness. Something, of course, depends upon the 
original or positive character of the individual. Some 
minds are more responsive to environment than others; 
some have more and some less power to protect them- 
selves against the errors and mistakes that root in the 
personality. 

Still a fourth conclusion is that teaching may be too 
thorough, that instruction may be overdone. Remember 
that we are dealing now with the young mind, which 
should not be cribbed and confined in a narrow cell 
of habits, but should acquire range as well as intensity 
of view. Than this, no stronger argument for wise 
teaching can be brought forward. Subject to inheritance, 
the teacher holds the child's mind in the hollow of his hand. 
The physiological psychologists have their peculiar expla- 
nation of the main fact that has been set forth. That in- 
tensified form of mental activity which we call appercep- 
tion is the result, they tell us, of the energizing and cor- 
relation of the nerves or the brain-tracts, and this is prob- 
ably enough. But no matter .what the explanation may 
be, the plain fact, while it has its unpleasant aspect, is 
still the pledge of all force and persistence in human char- 
acter. 

Once more, the moral or religious teacher will find in 
apperception the key to many perplexing questions. In 
grace, as in nature, the mind cannot respond to what it 



230 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

does not in kind already have. God made his first reve- 
lation to man when He gave him his mental and ethical 
being; that is, created man in His own image; and the 
highest test of the value of the Scriptures is the fact that 
they touch this primal revelation at so many points. The 
very assumption that God revealed Himself, or that He 
could reveal Himself, to a being in whom He did not al- 
ready implicitly exist, is a great absurdity. A nerve does 
not respond to light or sound unless it is sensitive to it by 
nature. Beautiful pictures do not appeal to the man who 
has no eyes, or fine music to him who has no experience 
of sweet sounds; and no more do spiritual lessons awaken 
a response in the soul of him who has no piety in his heart 
or purity in his life. Wordsworth wrote: 

Imagination needs must stir . . . 
Minds that have nothing to confer 
Eind little to perceive. 

And Coleridge: 

Dear lady, we receive but what we give, 
And in our life alone does nature live. 

It should not be thought strange therefore that opinion 
and faith, especially when we take large numbers of men 
together, change but slowly. The truth is that the so- 
called great and rapid changes are always preceded by 
some sort of a preparation. Historians are constantly re- 
marking the influence of old systems of thought upon 
new ones. How persistently the twelve Apostles read 
Jesus through their Jewish ideas and feelings! How 
slowly did they grope their way out of themselves! The 
differences of Jewish, Greek, and Latin Christianity, 
which are so observable, originated in the Iyevitical ideas 
of the Jewish mind, the philosophical ideas of the Greek 
mind, and the juridical ideas of the Roman mind. 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 23 1 

But it is time to draw nearer to our special subject, 
although in fact we have not been far from it at any 
time. A man's religion largely determines his relations 
to this life, and it wholly determines his relations to the 
life that is to come. It gives him his ethical ideal and 
supplies him motives. Carlyle once said that a man's 
religion is the chief fact with regard to him. Hence the 
question of religious training is one of supreme interest 
and importance. 

All that has been said of the secular mind is equally 
true in principle of the spiritual mind. It may well 
be true that material things have no original power to 
generate spiritual ideas and feelings, but that such ideas 
and feelings must proceed from spiritual things. It may 
well be that, as natural knowledge originates in the con- 
tact of the mind with natural realities, so spiritual knowl- 
edge originates in its contact with moral and religious 
realities. There can be no doubt that considerable refine- 
ment and subtlety of thought is required to find 

Tongues in trees, books in running brooks, 
Sermons in stones, and good in everything; 

or to feel that 

The meanest flower that blows, can give 
Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears. 

Still spiritual knowledge and feeling have a humble pater- 
nity. We may say that religion moves at different times 
in three spheres. 

The first is the nature-sphere. The feelings of won- 
der, mystery, awe, sublimity, solemnity, and grandeur 
that spring from communion with nature are the raw ma- 
terial out of which the religious feelings that bear the 
same "names are formed. The abundant use that the Tes- 
taments make of natural objects and scenes to create spir- 



232 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

itual thought and feeling, is most significant. ' ' Howbeit, 
that was not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
natural; and afterward that which is spiritual." The 
second sphere is that of man and society. It is in per- 
sonal contact with his nurses, parents, brothers and sis- 
ters, and mates, that the child's first conceptions of 
obedience, law, rule, authority, justice, truth, reverence, 
sympathy, piety, mercy, purity, spring up, and that the 
fountains of moral feeling are unsealed. Moreover, it is 
in similar commerce with men and women of the world 
that these conceptions are developed and the channels of 
these feelings deepened. The last sphere is the God- 
sphere. The moral ideas and feelings are common to 
both ethics and religion; while they do not always cul- 
minate in a large religious development, they are never- 
theless essential to the religious ideas and feelings. 
Strengthened, clarified, and adjusted to God as a center, 
they constitute religion. It will throw light upon the 
growth of religious ideas to sketch the growth of moral 
and civic ideas more fully. 

As remarked, it is in the family, in personal contact 
with its members, that the child forms the habits of obe- 
dience and deference to others. It is here that he learns, 
in a rudimentary and experimental way, that he is a part 
of a social whole. Here he acquires the ideas to which 
we give the names obedience, authority, government, and 
the like. His father (if we may unify the family govern- 
ment) is his first ruler, and his father's word his first law. 
Legislative, executive, and judicial functions are centered 
in a single person. These early habits and ideas are the 
foundations of the child's whole future education in gov- 
ernment, both practical and theoretical. His future con- 
ception of the governor, president, king, or emperor is 
developed on the basis of the idea of father; his con- 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 233 

ception of society on the basis of the idea of home; his 
conception of government by the state on the basis of fam- 
ily government. Only these early habits and ideas are 
expanded, strengthened, and adjusted to new centers. 

While still young the child goes to school. On the 
governmental side this is but a repetition of the home. 
It is the doctrine of the law that the teacher takes the 
place of the parent; in loco parentis. The new jurisdic- 
tion may be narrower than the old one, but it is of the 
same kind. The education of the school re-enforces the 
education of the home in respect to this all-important 
subject. The habits of obedience and deference are 
strengthened. The child's social world is enlarged. At 
first he thought, or rather felt, that he was alone in the 
world; then he learned that he must adjust himself to the 
family circle; now he discovers that he is a member of a 
still larger community, and that he must conduct himself 
accordingly. The ideas of authority, obedience, and law 
are expanded and clarified. 

About the time that the child goes to school he begins 
to take practical lessons in civil government. This also is 
developed on the basis of his previous home-training. It 
begins at the very door-step. The letter-carrier, the 
policeman, the justice of the peace, and the postmaster 
introduce him to the government of the outer world. Some 
or all of these officers he sees or knows, and others he 
hears about. The very mail wagon that rattles along the 
street teaches its lesson, and so do the other symbols ol 
authority that confront him. He attends an election and 
hears about the caucus. As he grows older, the town 
council, the court of the local magistrate, and the consta- 
ble or sheriff teach him the meaning of the three great 
branches of government. His ears as well as his e3 r es are 
open. Politics is the theme of much familiar conversation 



234 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

to which he listens. With all the rest, he reads the 
newspaper, and so enlarges his store of political informa- 
tion. 

Still other agencies contribute to the grand result. The 
church, public meetings, societies of various kinds, all 
teach lessons of order and discipline. 

Such, in general, are the steps by which the child 
makes his way out of the world of isolation and selfish- 
ness into the world of social activity and light. Such is 
the character of his early education in morals and prac- 
tical civics. Nor is it easy to overestimate these early 
lessons. To suppose that the child's political education 
begins with reading the Constitution of the United States, 
is like supposing that his moral education begins when 
he is first able to follow the preacher's sermon. 

At first, man is thoroughly individual and egoistical : 
The human baby is as selfish as the cub of the bear or 
fox. He is the most exacting tyrant in the world. No 
matter at what cost, his wants must be supplied. Such 
is his primary nature. But this selfish creature is endowed 
with a higher, an ideal nature. At first he knows only 
rights, and these he greatly magnifies; but, progressively, 
he learns, what no mere animal can learn, to curb his 
appetites, desires, and feelings, and to regard the rights, 
interests, and feelings of others. In other words, 
the human being is capable of learning his relations 
to the great social body of which he is a member. 
Mere individualism, mere egoism, is compelled to rec- 
ognize the force and value of altruistic conviction 
and sentiment. And this lesson, save alone his relations 
to the Supreme Being, is the greatest lesson that man 
ever learns. Moreover, the two lessons are closely con- 
nected. 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 235 

Filial piety in the home is a preparation for piety 
toward God. Fraternal love in the family comes before 
fraternal love in the church and in the world. The super- 
natural is builded upon the natural, the Divine upon the 
human. "Whoso hath this world's goods, and seeth his 
brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of* com- 
passion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him?" 
" If a man say, I love God, and hateth his brother, he is 
a liar; for he that loveth not his brother whom he hath 
seen, how can he love God whom he hath not seen?" 
And so with the other spiritual qualities. How can a 
man w T ho despises or contemns his father reverence God 
and obey Him? The method of religion is from the 
seen to the unseen, from the known to the unknown. 
But that is not all. It is no impiety to say that a 
man's first God is his father, his first heaven his home; 
and if that father has been impure or cruel, or that home 
unhappy, the phrases ' ' Father in heaven ' ' and ' ' the 
Father's house " lose much of their meaning and beauty. 
The fact is that we are quite incapable of estimating how 
far our religious ideas, feelings, and character have been 
shaped by the character of the homes in which we were 
reared. In so saying, formal religious instruction is left 
altogether out of the account. Indeed, we tend to ex- 
aggerate the value of such instruction as compared with 
the stream of unconscious influence that constantly flows 
into the life. 

Rousseau urged that, previous to his sixteenth year, 
the child should receive no formal religious instruction 
whatever. He gave as a reason that before such time 
the child would misconceive and distort all religious ideas 
that were presented to him. " Let us refrain," he says, 
' ' from announcing the truth to those who are not in a 
condition to understand it, for this is equivalent to sub- 



236 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

stituting error for it. It would be much better to have 
no idea of the Divinity, than to have ideas which are low, 
fanciful, wrongful, or unworthy of Him. Not to know 
the Divinity is a lesser evil than to have unworthy con- 
ceptions of Him." 1 Now it is impossible to deny that 
the young child is as superstitious as a savage, or that he 
is a natural idolater. But there are two objections to 
Rousseau' s reasoning. The first is that you cannot keep the 
child away from religion if you would. His imagination, 
working on the mysteries about him, will create its own 
Olympus or Asgard. Still further, no matter how long 
religious teaching may be deferred, error and distortion 
of views cannot be avoided. Every man is for a time a 
devotee of superstition; he may pass out of it into a 
rational religion, he may fall into mere negation or no- 
religion, or he may remain superstitious, as most men do 
in some degree, to the end of his life. Accordingly, the 
ideal is not a denial of religious instruction, but such 
instruction wisely administered. We must remember the 
principle laid down by the Apostle : ' ' When I was a 
child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I 
thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put 
away childish things. ' ' 

Still Rousseau's counsel cannot be wholly thrown aside. 
There is a valuable truth in the doctrine of negative 
instruction, and. it is a pity that he so exaggerated it. 
Let the child's mind work freely upon his moral environ- 
ment, only take pains to shield him in his weakness 
against the false, hateful, and vile. Religious ideas and 
feelings should be left to develop naturally and should 
not be forced. Remember the silent influences of the 
home, which fall into the young soul with power more 
penetrating, more persuasive, more lasting, than Italian 

1 Emile, p. 230. Translated by W. H. Payne. 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 2^1 

suns or Scandinavian snows. Unhappy the child who 
learns at home to read the world through clouds of sorrow, 
mists of prejudice, or flashes of passion ! Happy the child 
who learns to read it through the clear sunshine of 
wisdom, truth, and goodness ! 

What has been said of the home in respect to uncon- 
scious influence, applies in a measure to the school and 
the church. If they are what they ought to be, their 
indirect influence and effect will be great. The formal 
or external observances of religion play this part. Prayer, 
music, and the ordinances are clothed with spiritual sen- 
timents by children too young to understand their deeper 
import; and the influence of symbols over immature 
minds is such that these observances are sometimes the 
last fastness of expiring religious faith and feeling. Again, 
the relation of the ethical and esthetical elements of wor- 
ship, public or private, should not be disregarded. 

But negative instruction will not suffice; there must be 
positive teaching. At this point two or three words of 
admonition should be spoken. 

The first of these words is that formal spiritual teaching 
should not be unduly hastened. The reasons for this 
admonition have been once given, and need not be re- 
peated. It is far more important to look after the child's 
conduct, and to adjust his environment as maybe needed, 
than it is to teach him didactic lessons. 

The second word is that the lessons, when they come, 
should be wisely chosen. L,et them be such as will fortify 
and strengthen the child for the work of life. The parent 
or teacher should be upon his guard against dogma. First, 
it is to be considered that the ethical value of dogma is 
small. Dogma appeals to the logical faculty, not to the 
heart; it coalesces with the scientific, not with the 



238 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

practical elements of the mind, and therefore fails to 
touch the springs of moral life and action. Simple is the 
intellectual apparatus directly correlated with virtue. 
Few are the doctrines immediately productive of good con- 
duct. Remote indeed from life are many of the deliver- 
ances of the pulpit. But, more than this, dogma is often 
extremely harmful. Sometimes it is at variance with the 
facts of moral experience; sometimes it is a screen for a 
bad life; and often it becomes a burden. 

Thinking men feel the need of some scheme of religious 
truth, but young children have no such need, and are 
rather harmed by such a scheme. A system of theological . 
doctrines may be so welded upon the mind by teachers — 
apperception may do its work so thoroughly — that the 
child, when he becomes a man, can no more throw it off 
than a tortoise can cast away its shell. Besides, in cases 
where the system, less thoroughly riveted, is broken to 
pieces and thrown away, it is often at the cost of spiritual 
dislocations that cause great unhappiness and that some- 
times end in complete religious wreck. Happy the Man 
of the Iron Mask in comparison with him who is spir- 
itually shackled by a dogmatic system ! The cries of re- 
ligious despair, the wails of those who conceive them- 
selves to be lost, the blindness of imprisoned spirits, 
resulting from dogmatic teaching — these things should 
convince us that great wisdom is needed in conducting 
the religious training of children. It is by no means clear 
that the Canaanites who passed their children through the 
fire to Moloch, were less cruel than Christian parents who 
immolate their tender offspring upon the altar of a hard 
and hopeless theology. If there is any one thing that 
would cause Him who put His hands upon the little 
children and blessed them, to seize again the knotted 
scourge with which He drove the money-changers from 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 239 

the Temple, it must be the sight of Christian parents and 
teachers binding the souls of helpless infants and youth 
with the thongs of dogma, or pouring into them the 
poison of sectarian bigotry, envy, and hatred. 

It may be thought that this last admonition relates to 
a state of things that has passed away. Happily this is 
true in part. Still, that state of things is far from obsolete, 
and the admonition is neither outgrown nor likely to be 
outgrown. In particular should parents and teachers be 
careful how they teach religion to children of sensi- 
tive temperament and active imagination. 

I have remarked already that the intellectual apparatus 
which directly affects the spiritual life is simple. No doubt 
many facts and ideas affect it indirectly, and in the long 
run; but the religious lessons that need to be taught to 
children, and especially to young children, are few in 
number. The wisdom, purity, and goodness of God; the 
love of Jesus, the capacity of men. for growth and happi- 
ness, and the duty to seek those ends; wisdom, purity, 
forebearance, justice, magnanimity, truth, and goodness; 
men reap what they sow — these ideas lie at the basis of 
the moral life. The great care of the parent or the teacher 
should be to commit the child to virtue and piety, and to 
leave theology to the future man or woman. 

The creation of right habits, the proper development 
and regulation of the appetites, desires, and feelings, and 
the implantation of sound principles are all embraced in 
ethical cultivation; they are intertwined and mutually de- 
pendent; still, there is a constant tendency to exaggerate 
the value of the didactic element. It is far from true that 
habits, feelings, and ideas are alwaj^s measures one of 
another. A severe character does not always go with a 
severe creed, and a liberal spirit is not always associated 
with liberal opinions. 



240 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Material for spiritual instruction adapted to the needs 
of the child exists in greatest abundance. The Bible does 
not contain it all, but it contains the cream. Still, it 
should not be taught to children indiscriminately. The 
Bible is pre-eminently a book to be used with judgment. 
The interest of much of it is historical, not unlike the 
interest that attaches to the laws of the Ten Tables. 
There are whole chapters which are as lacking in spiritual 
content as Homer's list of the Grecian ships and heroes 
that went to the siege of Troy. Portions of the Old Testa- 
ment certainly suggest, if they do not inculcate, a morality 
that is outgrown, while other portions move in an environ- 
ment so unlike modern life that they do not interest 
untaught minds. While the New Testament is in gen- 
eral superior to the Old, still it is not throughout of equal 
spiritual value. Highest on the roll of books stand the 
incomparable Gospels. Jesus is a better teacher of chil- 
dren than Paul. The story of Jesus and His great 
utterances, as the Sermon on the Mount and the parables 
of the Prodigal Son, the Good Samaritan, the Talents, and 
the Sower, should be fixed in every mind. The story of 
the Apostles and their sermons are to be preferred to 
their Epistles. And yet the Epistles contain matter ad- 
mirably suited to our purpose. Paul's Song of Eove and 
his Ode on Immortality, found in First Corinthians, are far 
better fitted to form the character than the theological 
discussions of Romans and Galatians. While inferior to 
the New, the Old Testament is still rich in spiritual 
teaching. Some of the tales, as that of Joseph, sermons 
of the prophets, passages of Job, parts of the Hebrew 
Wisdom, and many of the Psalms, are unsurpassed, if not 
indeed unequaled, as means for creating noble ideas and 
developing noble feeling. Still more, the educative value 
of the Scriptures is much increased by the noble language 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 241 

in which the thoughts are clothed. And this fact sug- 
gests again the close connection between esthetical and 
spiritual impressions. 

Two or three prudential remarks will fitly close this 
address. 

No attempt should be made fully to satisfy the curiosity 
of children about spiritual things. The mysteries about 
them constantly suggest questions that must be deferred 
until a later period. Moreover, to decide what questions 
should be answered, and what passed by, calls for no little 
insight and common sense. 

Then it is a great mistake constantly to crowd the 
lesson or the moral of what is taught into the foreground. 
Even the Sunday-school is no place for what children 
sometimes contemptuously call ' 'preaching. " Religious 
exercises should be ordered and conducted with reference 
to spiritual ends, but these ends should not be made 
obtrusive. Let the exercise carry the lesson or the moral. 
If the contrary course be taken, one of two things is 
likely to happen: either the child will fall into insincerity 
and cant, or he will assume a position of antagonism to 
all formal spiritual influence. The normal child, as well as 
the normal adult, rebels when it comes to thrusting a 
spiritual habit upon him. He fortifies himself against 
what he deems unwarrantable intrusions into the sanctuary 
of his mind. Or, as an able writer remarks: "The child 
protects its inner individuality against effacement through 
external author it}^, by taking an attitude of rebellion 
against stories with an appended moral." 

But much more than this should be said. Some people 
are always ready to take account of spiritual stock, so to 
speak, and to hand you an inventory of their conceptions, 
feelings, and experiences. They take a morbid pleasure 



2^.2 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

in such ethical bookkeeping and advertising. But this is 
not the worst of it; such persons are wont to assume that 
others should be like themselves, and they accordingly 
conclude that reticence on topics of personal religion 
argues gross spiritual defect. Such habits betray a vulgar 
mind. Such persons are wanting in self-respect and 
delicacy of feeling. Children will sometimes invite re- 
ligious conversation; a certain spiritual openness or frank- 
ness may be encouraged, for there is such a thing as an 
undue concealment of the feelings; but it is important to 
remember that high-minded men and women maintain a 
certain reserve in respect to their feelings, and also regard 
the privacy of others. Still more, continually to peer into 
the child's mind to see what growth the seed is making, 
shows lack of faith in the seed itself. It has been likened 
to pulling up the bean-stalks in the garden to see how 
they are sprouting. "In the morning sow thy seed, and 
in the evening withhold not thy hand; for thou knowest 
not which shall prosper; either this or that, or whether 
they shall be alike good." It cannot be doubted that 
many, if not most, so-called "serious" conversations with 
children are harmful. 

Finally, do not fall into the heresy that children should 
be taught nothing that is beyond their comprehension. 
Understanding is a thing of degrees. No doubt too little 
pains was formerly taken to adapt instruction to children; 
but that is no reason for flying to the opposite extreme, 
and measuring out every idea and every word according 
to the child's present capacity. The oft-repeated warning 
to tell children nothing that they do not understand, is 
more harmful when applied to spiritual than to secular 
things. At its core religion is emotion, not intelligence; 
its method is intuition or faith, not demonstration; and if 
such emotions as veneration, reverence, and piety are not 



MORAL AND RELIGIOUS TRAINING OF CHILDREN. 243 

to be cultivated until their nature and the causes that 
produce them are understood, then they will never be 
cultivated at all. There is much in religion that transcends 
the farthest reach of thought. Most fortunately, how- 
ever, influences and experiences that are helpful to the 
soul are not limited by the scientific understanding. 
From the sky, the mountain, and the sea; from the social 
world, history, and literature; from the church, the Bible, 
and the Divine Spirit itself — spiritual influences will flow 
into souls little capable of understanding them, if only the 
opportunity be given. The great passages of the Bible 
may be read and committed to memory years before they 
can be logically analyzed. A glimpse of the Divine 
majesty, a view of the future glory, a touch of the 
celestial fire, will come to the heart and life of a little 
child from a lesson that he will never fully comprehend. 




XII. 

PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 1 

HE suggestion that the principle of ' ' pay- 
ment by results" should be adopted as the 
best method of solving the question of reli- 
gious instruction in the public schools of the 
United States, makes timely a discussion of that feature 
of the English system of public education. 2 A brief 
account of its development is essential. 

Previous to 1832 the English government had never 
done anything for the education of the people. Not one 
penny had ever been voted by Parliament, or by any 
local public authority, to pay a school-teacher or to build 
a schoolhouse. The existing means of education were 
the few hundred endowed grammar schools scattered over 
the country; the parish or charity schools, which were 
the peculiar educational product of the eighteenth cen- 
tury; the schools founded after 1808 and 1811, respect- 
ively, by the two educational societies, the British and 
Foreign School Society and the National Society; and 
the Sunday schools, which still followed the example set 
by Raikes, at Gloucester, of teaching the simplest ele- 
ments of learning as well as religion. For the most 
part, tuition in the grammar schools was gratuitous; still 

1 The Educational Review, September, 1892. 

2 An address by Archbishop Ireland delivered before the Na- 
tional Educational Association at St. Paul, July, 1890. See the 
Proceedings of the Association for that year, p. 179. 

Sj44 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 245 

the expense of attendance excluded the lower classes. 
They were strictly middle-class schools, as they are to-day. 
Moreover, the majority of these schools had fallen into 
decay, some because the tide of population had turned 
away from them, and some because they had been badly 
managed. Instruction in the charity schools, which was 
commonly poor, was not only free, but clothing was often 
provided for the children as well. But these schools were 
altogether insufficient in number and in equipment. Both 
the grammar schools and the charity schools were mainly 
under the control and management of the Established 
Church. The British and Foreign Society aimed, in its 
schools, to teach secular studies and the Bible; the 
National Society, to teach the doctrines of the Established 
Church and secular studies. There was absolutely 
nothing answering to public schools as that expression is 
now understood in most of the well-educated countries of 
the world. 

No one who understands the magnitude of national 
education need be told that this was a miserable educa- 
tional provision for such a country as England. Of the 
whole population, only 1 in 11.25 was at school; whereas 
in Prussia the ratio was 1 in 6.27; in Holland, 1 in 8.11; 
and in France, 1 in 9. 

In 1832 the government took its first step toward 
promoting popular education. Parliament voted £20,- 
000 to supplement local enterprise in building school- 
houses. It was a small beginning; but Parliament 
repeated the grant for several years, and then it began to 
increase the sum voted. About the same time that the 
increase began, Parliament included normal schools and 
teachers' salaries in the grants. To trace minutely the 
successive steps that led up to the present system of ele- 
mentary schools is here impossible and unnecessary, but 



246 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

a summary of four or five points will assist in under- 
standing the present status. 

When a good beginning had once been made, the gov- 
ernment rapidly expanded its operations. The grants 
voted for schools at intervals of five years will make this 
plain: 1835, £20,000; 1840, £30,000; 1845, £75,000; 
1850, £125,000; 1855, £397,000; 1860, £798,000; 1865, 
£637,000; 1869, £415,000. 

At first the grants voted by Parliament were appor- 
tioned by the lords of the treasury on the recommenda- 
tion of the two educational societies. But in time there 
began to develop, in the characteristic English manner, a 
department of education. In 1839 the Privy Council 
passed an order constituting four persons named * ' a 
committee to superintend the application of any sums 
voted by Parliament for the purpose of promoting 
public education." The committee that had at first 
to administer but £30,000 a year, gradually grew into 
a great department of State, dealing with an annual 
grant from the exchequer of nearly £2,000,000, and 
exercising a very wide and important discretion. Finally, 
Parliament passed an act creating a vice-president of the 
council, and making him the head of the committer 
on education; but with this exception, the whole mechar 
ism of administration stood simply upon usage. The 
secretary of this committee, however, was and is its real 
head. 

The department established an inspectorship. At first 
this extended only to the buildings that the government 
helped to build; but when grants came to be made for 
schools also, the inspection was extended to the secular 
teaching, leaving religious instruction wholly to the local 
managers. This inspectorship was to see that the gov- 
ernment got the value of its money. 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 



247 



The first rules of administration adopted by the lords 
of the treasury, and afterward by the committee on edu- 
cation, were called "minutes." But as these minutes 
multiplied, they were finally gathered into a document 
called ■ ' Code of Regulations by the Lords of the Com- 
mittee of Privy Council on Education;" or simply 
" The Code." Pursuant to the ninety-seventh section of 
the act of 1870, the department annually lays the code, 
revised from time to time, on the table of the Houses of 
Parliament. If it is not amended by the Houses, or re- 
jected by either of them, within thirty days, it goes into 
effect- The code in operation at any time contains the 
conditions that public elementary schools and training 
colleges for teachers must comply with, in order to obtain 
an annual grant from the treasury in aid of their main- 
tenance. 

It was in the Revised Code of 1861 that the principle 
of payments by results first appeared. Mr. Robert 
Lowe, afterwards Lord Sherbrooke, was then the head 
of the educational committee. The annual grant by 
Parliament had grown to more than three-quarters of a 
million sterling. The government, under the peculiar 
system, had no assurance that it was expending its money 
j|risely. Repeated investigation, on the other hand, 
proved very clearly that much of it was little better than 
thrown away. Hitherto the government had made its 
payments to teachers personally, according to a prescribed 
schedule. Many of them were worse than incompetent. 
To remedy these evils, it was proposed to make payments 
to the managers rather than to the teachers, and to graduate 
them to the results of individual examination of pupils, 
or to withhold them altogether. More definitely, the 
new propositions were these: " The school must be held 
in approved premises, and must be under the charge of a 



248 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

certificated teacher; " " The children must have made a 
certain number of attendances; " "They must pass an 
individual examination in reading, writing, and arithmetic, 
and according to results in each individual case a grant was 
to be made. ' ' This last clause contains the principle of 
payment by results that is now brought forward as a 
solution of one of our difficult educational problems. 
Mr. Lowe took the idea from the recommendations of 
the Duke of Newcastle's Commission, which had in- 
vestigated the state of public education in the years 
1858-1860. Mr. Lowe said the government must have 
proof that the teachers were doing their duty; class ex- 
aminations were not adequate; such expressions as "gen- 
eral efficiency ' ' and ' ' moral atmosphere ' ' in the reports 
of inspectors were "impalpable essences." Nothing 
would do but individual examinations. Mr. Lowe de- 
clared: "If the new system is costly, it shall at least be 
efficient; if it is inefficient, it shall be cheap." Hence, 
payment by results was merely a mode of guarding the 
treasury. An American might think that the proper pre- 
caution for the government to have taken would have been 
to look after the examination, selection, and supervision of 
the teachers. But this the character of the system that 
had grown up prevented. The government, did not ex- 
amine, employ, or supervise the teachers. There were 
no school officers other than the committee at Whitehall 
and the inspectors and clerks whom it appointed. There 
were thousands of government-assisted schools, but there 
was not in England one State school, as we understand 
that expression. The government had formed a great 
number of educational partnerships with local managers 
scattered over the kingdom, furnishing a part of the 
money, and a general inspection to see that it received its 
money's worth. The local managers provided the re- 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 



249 



mainder of the money and local management. Fees were 
generally charged; and there was not, in our sense, a free 
school in England. 

Dissatisfaction with this system grew quite as rapidly 
as the system itself. But it took very different directions. 
The Established Church was well satisfied in the main, 
because the system attended to its aggrandizement. The 
Dissenters generally were displeased; and many of them, 
because they saw the existing system contributing to the 
upbuilding of the Establishment, took the position, in 
which they were supported by a considerable number of doc- 
trinaires, that the State should not meddle with education , 
but leave it to voluntary enterprise. Then there sprang 
up the Secularists, who stood on a platform adopted at 
Birmingham in 1847: " To promote the establishment by 
law in England and Wales of a system of free schools, 
which, supported by local rates and managed by a local 
committee specially elected for that purpose by the rate- 
payers, shall inspect secular instruction, only leaving to 
parents, guardians, and religious teachers the instruction 
of religion ; to afford opportunities for which it is proposed 
that the school shall be closed at stated hours each 
week. ' ' 

But in the midst of the confusion there was a growing 
conviction that the State must go farther and do more. 
Popular education entered into politics. In 1867 the 
Queen, in the speech from the throne, commended the 
subject to the attention of Parliament, and in 1869 Mr. 
Gladstone came into power, with an immense majority in 
the House of Commons at his back, pledged to new mea- 
sures. One of the great achievements of his ministry 
was the Elementary Education Act of 1870, often called 
the " Forster Act," from the fact that it was carried 



25O STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

through the Commons by Rt. Hon. W. E. Forster, the 
Vice-President of the Council and head of the educational 
department. This act, and two supplementary ones, the 
Sandon Act of 1876, and the Mundella Act of 1880, are 
the basis of the elementary educational system of Eng- 
land and Wales as it exists to-day. 

The Forster Act was a great disappointment to those 
who desired the establishment of a State system of schools, 
pure and simple, leaving private schools and parochial 
schools to find their own place. It changed the existing 
edifice somewhat, put on a large addition, and laid a new 
foundation under the whole structure. In explaining 
the bill, Mr. Forster said the government "must cover 
the country with good schools, and get the parents to 
send their children to those schools. ' ' This one sentence 
from his speech well characterizes the measure: "Our 
object is to complete the present voluntary system, to fill 
up gaps, sparing the public money where it can be done 
without, procuring as much as possible the assistance of 
the parents, and welcoming, as much as we rightly can, 
the cooperation and aid of those benevolent men who 
desire to assist their neighbors. ' ' The most radical feat- 
ure of the new act was this: it divided the kingdom into 
school districts; ascertained in what districts additional 
school facilities were needed, and to what extent; created 
local school boards, empowered and required to vote local 
rates for the maintenance of schools, where they were 
needed, to be carried on under their management, these 
new board schools being intended to fill the gaps in the 
existing system. 

The Act of 1870 defined an elemetary school as ' ' a 
school or department of a school at which elementary 
education is the principal part of the education there 
given, and does not include any school or department of 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 25 1 

a school at which the ordinary payments in respect of the 
instruction from each scholar exceed ninepence a week. ' ' 
The definition of a public elementary school is much 
more elaborate, viz. : — 

Every elementary school which is conducted in accordance with 
the following regulations shall be a public elementary school with- 
in the meaning of this act; and every public elementary school 
shall be conducted in accordance with the following regulations (a 
copy of which regulations shall be conspicuously put up in every 
such school), namely: 

(1) It shall not be required, as a condition of any child being 
admitted into, or continuing in the school, that he shall attend, 
or abstain from attending, any Sunday-school or any place of 
religious worship, or that he shall attend any religious observance, 
or any instruction in religious subjects in the school or elsewhere, 
from which observance or instruction he may be withdrawn by 
his parent, or that he shall, if withdrawn by his parent, attend the 
school on any day exclusively set apart for religious observance 
by the religious body to which his parent belongs. 

(2) The time or times during which any religious observance is 
practised, or instruction in religious subjects is given at any meet- 
ing of the school, shall be either at the beginning or at the end, 
or at the beginning and the end of such meeting, and shall be in- 
serted in a time-table to be approved by the Education Depart- 
ment, and to be kept permanently and conspicuously affixed in 
every schoolroom, and any scholar may be withdrawn by his 
parent from such observance or instruction without forfeiting any 
of the other benefits of the school. 

(3) The school shall be open at all times to the inspection of any 
of Her Majesty's Inspectors, so, however, that it shall be no part of 
the duties of such Inspector to inquire into any instruction in re- 
ligious subjects given at such school, or to examine any scholar 
therein in religious knowledge, or in any religious subject or book. 

(4) The school shall be conducted in accordance with the con- 
ditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in order to 
obtain an annual parliamentary grant. 

It will be seen that a public elementary school in Eng- 
land is something very different from such a school in the 



252 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

United States. It may be a board school or a voluntary 
school; and if a voluntary school, it may be a Church school, 
a Catholic school, a Congregational school, or a Jewish 
school. Board schools derive their income from the par- 
liamentary grants, the local rates, fees or <( children's 
pence," and voluntary contributions. Voluntary public 
schools have the same sources of income, except the 
rates. The conditions to be fulfilled by schools in order 
to obtain an annual grant, in addition to those prescribed 
in the law itself, are laid down in the code, Some of the 
principal conditions found in the code of March, 1890, 
that went into operation September 1 of that year, are the 
following: 

The school must be conducted as a public elementary 
school; no child must be refused admittance on other than 
reasonable grounds; the time-table, and also the fees 
charged by a board school, must be approved by the 
department; the school must not be unnecessary, nor be 
conducted for private profit, nor be farmed out to the 
teachers; the principal teacher must be certificated; a day 
school must have been in session not less than 400 half- 
days in the year; the school premises must be healthy, 
and the school be efficient; the managers must make the 
required reports, and publish annually accounts of their 
income and expenditure; and the income must be applied 
only for the purposes of public elementary education. 

The annual grants made to schools complying with 
these conditions consist of several items that are deter- 
mined by a set of very technical rules. Unless otherwise 
ordered, the grant is made for each ' ' unit of average 
attendance " ; or, as we should say, the average daily 
attendance of a pupil for the year. Omitting qualifica- 
tions, the grant for an infant school, comprising children 
of from three to seven years of age, is made up as follows: 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 253 

(1) A fixed grant of 9s. or 7s.; (2) a variable grant of 
2s., 4s. or 6s. ; (3) a grant of Is. for needlework; (4) a 
singing grant of Is. , if the singing is by ?iote, or of 6d. if 
by ear. That is, a ' ' unit of average attendance ' ' may 
"earn" (as it is called) 17s. for this school, while forty 
such units may earn forty times that sum. 

The grants to a school for older scholars are much more 
complicated. There is (1) a principal grant of 12s. 6d. 
or 14s.; (2) a fixed grant for discipline and organization 
of Is. or Is. 6d. ; (3) a grant for needlework of Is. (for 
girls only); (4) a grant for singing of Is. or 6d; (5) a 
grant for examination in class subjects of Is. or 2s. ; (6) 
a grant on examination of individual scholars in specific 
subjects of 4s. ; (7) a grant (for girls) for cooking; and 
(8) a grant (for girls also) for laundry work. Class sub- 
jects are English, geography, elementary science, history, 
and needlework for girls. The specific subjects are alge- 
bra, geometry, mechanics, chemistry, physics, physiology, 
botany, principles of agriculture, Latin, French, domestic 
economy, Welsh (in Wales), German, bookkeeping, and 
shorthand. 

Then there are special grants for day schools in respect 
of pupil teachers and of assistant teachers employed for 
schools so situated that they are put to unusual expense, 
and for evening schools. Training colleges for teachers 
are also provided for. The total annual grant to any 
school, exclusive of special grants, shall not exceed either 
17s. 6d. for each unit of school attendance, or the total 
income of the school from all other sources than the grant. 
It may be asked why the grant varies, consisting of so 
many different items. The answer is easy. It was found 
necessary to break up the monotony developed under the 
Revised Code of 1861, when the aim of school managers 
was to crowd as many pupils as possible through three or 



254 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

four elementary studies, because in that way they would 
earn most money. 

Such, in outline, is the origin and nature of the rule of 
payment by results. Mr. Matthew Arnold once charac- 
terized it in this way: 

To a clever Minister and an austere Secretary, to the House 
of Commons and the newspapers, the scheme of "payment by 
results," and those results reading, writing, and arithmetic, "the 
most necessary part of what children come to school to learn " — a 
scheme which should make public education "if not efficient, 
cheap, and if not cheap, efficient' ' — was, of course, attractive. It 
was intelligible, plausible, likely to be carried, likely to be main- 
tainable after it had been carried. That, by concentrating the 
teacher's attention upon enabling his scholars to pass in the three 
elementary matters, it must injure the teaching, narrow it, and 
make it mechanical, was an educator's objection easily brushed 
aside by our public men. l 

This scheme was adopted in the face of the remonstrance 
of the highest educational authorities of the country. It 
was the device of a man who looked at education from the 
standpoint of the treasury, and not the standpoint of the 
schoolhouse. It has never been adopted on the Continent; 
and Mr. Arnold attributes much of the inferiority of the 
English schools to its harmful influence. It was a make- 
shift when adopted, and a confession on its face that Eng- 
land had no system of State schools. It corrected the 
particular evils that troubled Mr. I^owe, as is shown by 
the large falling-off in the grants from 1860 to 1869; but 
it engendered other evils that a high authority has thus 
summarized: 

(a) It has organized a system of cram, under which "results," 
measured by the standard examinations as opposed to "methods," 
have received undue recognition and reward, (b) All scholars, 

1 The Reign of Queen Victoria. Edited by T. H, Ward. Vol. 
II., p. 261. 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 



255 



whether clever or dullards, progress at the same rate — one stand- 
ard per annum; and at the same rate in all subjects simultane- 
ously, (c) The degree of success, with neglect, incapacity, and the 
bad influences of home surroundings, meets with little recognition 
as compared with the success in " passing " a high percentage of 
scholars, (d) The profession of the teacher is degraded by per- 
sistent and obtrusive appeals to the desire of gain. In the 
absence of monetary inducements, teachers are tempted to neglect 
scholars who are not likely to earn good grants, (e) Little 
encouragement is given to teachers to forward the higher moral 
and intellectual training of their scholars, as opposed to the mere 
acquisition of mechanical facilities in the subjects of examination. 
{/) Scholars trained under this system, and subsequently passing 
on to secondary schools, are characterized by a lack of mental 
alertness, and frequently disappoint their early promise. x 

For many years the most intelligent friends of education 
in England have been struggling to rid the schools of this 
system. The Education Department itself has labored to 
mitigate its evils; in the last code, for instance, it threw 
individual examinations for grants out of the infant schools 
altogether, and otherwise limited their operations. But all 
efforts to throw off the incubus have hitherto proved 
unavailing. It was adopted in the interest of the treasury, 
rather than of the schoolhouse; and it is felt in influential 
quarters that the need still exists, in view of the mixed 
character of the public school system. The department 
could easily manage the board schools, but there have 
grown up since 1832 thousands of voluntary schools that 
are fed from the treasury by this principle as a feeding- 
pipe. There has been since 1840 a veritable concordat 
existing between the State and the Church schools, and 
this the State does not see its way to break up What the 
future may be, it is hard to predict; but for the time sec- 
tarianism is the pledge of the system of payment by 
results in the schools of England. 

1 Sonnenschein's Cyclopedia of Education: Payment by Results. 



256 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

To adopt this system in the United States would be the 
height of folly. There would arise systems of schools 
within a system. There would be the board public 
schools, the Catholic public schools, the Lutheran public 
schools, and so on. As a consequence, children and 
teachers would be segregated according to their religious 
affiliations; points of friction would be multiplied; irrita- 
tion and jealousy would increase, and the public school 
system, in the best of all senses, would cease to exist. 

Not very long ago the older portions of the United 
States were supplied with schools of a very heterogene- 
ous character. In most States there were the State 
schools, not well organized and nowhere free. In all the 
States there were- private schools and denominational 
schools of various kinds. Among these schools the 
children were distributed with large reference to social 
rank, condition, and religious connections. Narrowness 
and selfishness were the result. It is the glory of the 
public-school system, as it now exists, to have swept this 
order of things away. Thousands of private schools and 
denominational schools have disappeared. Save the large 
number of children in the Catholic parochial schools, and 
the relatively small number found in the parochial schools 
of other churches and in private schools, the children of 
the State have been brought together in one system of 
schools, erected and supported by the State. With all 
their faults, the intellectual, moral, social, and political 
interests of the country have been greatly promoted by 
these schools. To build up this system has cost a vast 
amount of labor, thought, and money. It has been 
opposed at every step by the champions of special educa- 
tional views and of narrow interests. It is one system, and 
one it is likely to remain. In England, where social distinc- 
tions are old and firmly rooted; where the Established 



PAYMENT BY RESULTS. 2$? 

Church is all powerful; where the strife between the 
Establishment and Nonconformity is bitter, payment by 
results may be temporarily useful in aiding the people to 
reach a unified system of State schools. In the United 
States there is little reason to fear that it will be allowed 
first to disintegrate and finally to destroy the noble system 
that now exists. 

Note:.— Some important educational history has been made in 
England since this paper was written, and in part since it was 
published. Payment by results has been almost wholly abandoned. 
Moreover, Parliament passed an act in 1891 that materially 
changed the financial support of schools. The full text of this 
act may be found in The Educational Review. Vol. II. , p. 303, et 
seq. 




XIII. 

THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY 

SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 1 

HE school system of a republican state is not 
only for the people, but of the people, and by 
the people. It will therefore reflect the popu- 
lar intelligence, virtue, and spirit. It may in- 
deed be better or worse than its creators, but only for a 
limited time. The schools of any community or state, in the 
long run, will not rise far above or fall far below the civil- 
ization around them. Owing to a happy conjunction of 
circumstances, they may pass beyond the range of public 
appreciation and sympathy; but if so, they will either fall 
back to the people, or halt until the people overtake 
them. Owing to unfavorable influences, the schools may 
fall into the rear of the column, and fail to express the 
average culture and life; but if so, the public will in time 
find it out, and will compel them to quicken their pace. 
Guizot holds that civilization consists of two principal 
facts — the progress of society and the progress of the in- 
dividual; and he says: " The two events are so intimately 
connected that, if they are not produced simultaneously, 
sooner or later one uniformly produces the other. ' ' 2 
Herbert Spencer hints a similar philosophy in his celebrated 
remark, with which as a fact we have nothing to do, that 
we Americans got our form of government by a happy acci- 

1 Report of the Committee on City School to the National 
Council of Education. San Francisco, Cal., July, 1888. 

2 History of Civilisation, Lect. I. 

258 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 259 

dent, not by normal progress; and that we shall have to go 
backward before we can go forward. 1 In the long run, a 
progressive society moves as a unit and not in sections; 
and between the public schools and the public there will 
always be intimate reciprocal relations. One of the many 
deductions to be drawn from this truth is, that we cannot 
give any people a useful system of schools: such schools 
must grow up on the soil, and be an expression of the 
popular life. 

The relations of the people to the public schools in an 
American state may be thus analyzed: — 

First, they delegate to the legislature, in the State con- 
stitution, power to constitute and sustain a system of 
schools. 

Secondly, the legislature creates such a system, delegat- 
ing to local authorities, variously called the schoolboard, 
the school-committee, etc., power to organize and carry 
on schools in their respective localities. 

Thirdly, the board, in the discharge of its legal duties, 
delegates to teachers the functions of teaching and disci- 
pline, subject to the law and the board's supervision. 

Fourthly, the people elect, at frequently recurring 
periods, the members of the legislature, and commonly of 
the board itself; while within these periods they exert, or 
may exert, a strong influence over legislature, board, 
and teachers alike. As respects the last, this influence 
is so strong that it may be doubted whether any corps 
of teachers in the country could resist an energetic 
expression of public opinion on any matter that it can 
change for ten consecutive days. Thus the popular power 
returns to itself, constituting a circle. In fact, there is 
no other American institution that, taking everything to- 
gether, is so democratic as the public school. 

1 Herbert Spencer on the Americans. 



260 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

It will be seen that a system of public schools, in oper- 
ation, presents four phases to our view: the work of the 
legislature, the work of the board, the work of the 
teachers, and the work of the public. This report will 
partially traverse all these divisions, but will deal mainly 
with the board. 

Between the schools of a city considered as an organiza- 
tion of business and as an organization of instruction, 
there is a strong reciprocal influence. The two cannot be 
permanently separated in character more than the schools 
can be separated from the civilization in the midst of 
which they exist. The board formally enacts courses 
of study, chooses text-books, and elects teachers, as 
well as builds buildings; it establishes formal rules 
of discipline and has the power, which it often exer- 
cises, to set up standards of examination; and, by its 
manner of doing business, the culture, tone, and bearing, 
etc., of its members, greatly influences teachers, giv- 
ing them courage or otherwise, and also affects the morale 
of the schools and public opinion. So strongly was the 
late Dr. Philbrick impressed by these facts that he passed 
by the Prussian maxim, "As is the teacher, so is the 
school," and the Dutch maxim, "As your inspection is, 
so is the school," to formulate the maxim, "As is your 
school board, so are your schools. " x At the same time 
teachers are an educational force of unquestionable 
strength over and above what they do in schoolrooms. If 
able and devoted, they slowly raise the standard of intel- 
ligence; they act directly upon public opinion, and, through 
that, are felt in the election of members and in the coun- 
sels of the board; while they act upon that body directly 
through their expert knowledge and moral force. 

1 City School Systems in the United States, p. 14. 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 26 1 

It does not follow from this reasoning that the business 
and educational sides of a system of schools, will, at any 
given time, be equally well developed. Far from it. At 
the present time, for example, the schools as organiza- 
tions of instruction are better than the schools as organ- 
izations of business; that is, the teachers, open as they 
may be to criticism, are still somewhat in advance of 
average public sentiment and of average board admin- 
istration. The pressing need of the hour is, for the 
people and the board to overtake the teachers. Still, 
such a state of things as this cannot last long; good 
schools, a bad schoolboard, and an indifferent or ignor- 
ant public opinion will not long exist side by side in the 
same city; the board and the public will rise to the level 
of the schools, or the schools will fall to the level of the 
board and the public. 

Perhaps two or three further remarks touching the 
relations of teachers and the board may be permitted. 

Instruction is so purely a professional matter that the 
board is commonly disposed to allow teachers to make the 
course of study, to set the standard of examinations, and 
to invent methods of instruction; but it accords them no 
power, and but limited influence, in the selection of text- 
books and in fixing the qualifications of teachers, not to 
mention matters of a purely business nature, as finance, 
construction, and the like. So far as merely business 
matters are concerned, some boards are sensitive even to 
suggestions from teachers. ' 'Stick to your last ! " is the 
sentiment that burns in the breast of many a board-mem- 
ber. In fact, there is reason to think that, owing to the 
division of labor, and perhaps to other causes, the admin- 
istrative and teaching functions of the schools are 
becoming more widely separated than formerly. In some 
places board-members appear to take less interest in the 



262 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

schools as places of teaching, leaving them more and 
more to the teachers, while they more and more magnify 
their own peculiar office. It is always difficult to prove 
propositions relating to the slow drift of opinion or of 
social change; but it is at least questionable whether in 
some States the influence of teachers in school legislation 
is equal to what it was thirty years ago. At least, the 
teachers of whole States have called upon the legislature 
again and again for legislation of the value of which they 
are not only the best, but almost the only competent 
judges; and only to see their call fall at the feet of legis- 
lators powerless and dead. More than formerly, educa- 
tional meetings are gatherings of teachers; fewer outsiders 
appear on the programmes; and the subjects discussed are 
more professional and less administrative or popular. 
Perhaps this closer specialization of functions is attended 
by some advantages; it certainly is by some disadvan- 
tages. 

However they may differ as to these general views, 
practical school men will generally, if not universally, 
agree that the constitution and powers of the schoolboard, 
the mode of selecting its members, and its methods of 
doing business are all live school questions. They will 
be briefly discussed in order. 

I. The Constitution and Powers of the Board. — The 
constitution and powers of the board, which is neces- 
sarily the creature of State law, must depend in a measure 
on the local political institutions of the State. Manifestly, 
the town system of New England, the county system of 
the South, and the compromise system of the Middle 
States and the West will materially influence the school 
legislation of these groups of States. In fact, we have 
no difficulty in dividing our State school laws and systems 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 263 

into three classes corresponding to these three groups of 
local institutions. In New England the local school 
authorities are either town officers or district officers, or 
both; in the South they are mainly county and district 
officers; while in the vast region covered by the compro- 
mise system, town and county officers, and often district 
officers, unite in administering the schools. It is there- 
fore impossible to create a model school system, or even 
school-board, that would answer for all parts of the 
country. A county superintendent would be an anomaly 
in New England, where the county is a judicial but 
hardly a political division; 1 a town meeting would be an 
anomaly in the South, where the town in a political sense 
does not exist; while in the West both town elements and 
county elements are mingled in all the school systems. 
These facts of local institutional life will differentiate our 
school laws and our school systems as long as they con- 
tinue to exist. Men will not be apt to use the county 
or the town for school purposes unless they also use it 
for political purposes. 

To a great extent, however, city schools must be 
excepted from the foregoing generalization. Generally 
speaking, such schools exist under special charters or laws, 
or the general school laws of the State are supplemented 
by special provisions- Thus, the laws of Ohio contain 
numerous provisions relating to city districts of the first 
grade of the first class, of the second grade of the first 
class, etc. As a consequence of this partial withdrawal of 
the city schools from the larger systems, and of the prev- 
alence in American cities of similar conditions, the city 
schools are much more homogeneous as respects both the 
organization of business and the organization of instruc- 

1 The county superintendency has been introduced intc 
Vermont. 



264 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

tion than the country and village schools. Moreover, the 
conditions existing in cities are such that this segregation 
of the schools is a necessity. For example, the schools 
of a city cannot be made, or be kept, subject to the county 
supervision; nor can the board be compelled to wait on 
the motions of a township board. There must be a local 
authority coextensive with the jurisdiction, legally capa- 
ble of taking the initiative. So very strong is this ten- 
dency that even small villages struggle for and obtain 
school autonomy. 

But the question of city autonomy disposed of, a more 
difficult question remains, viz. : What shall be the rela- 
tion of the local board to the municipal government? 
Shall it be independent, or shall it be subordinate? 
And if subordinate, to what extent? In New England, 
where the town meeting in its sovereign capacity passes 
on all fundamental questions of local government, includ- 
ing the schools, this cannot be a very important question; 
but in places where the local government is representative, 
and not democratic, it is of much importance. The cities 
of the country present the widest contrasts in this respect. 
In some, the school board is as completely independent of 
the city council and all other municipal authorities as 
though the two did not belong to the same municipality; 
while in others, nothing done by the board is done finally 
until the council has ratified it. Both of these are ex- 
treme plans. However, this question will not be discussed 
here, except to say that the arguments in favor of keep- 
ing the financial affairs of the city unified are, from the 
side of municipal administration, absolutely conclusive; 
and that there is no more reason for giving the educational 
department autonomy than for giving it to the parks, the 
streets, or the fire department. Education is a civil 
affair, but not an autonomous affair. Of course, it does 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 265 

not follow that it would always be wise to reorganize an 
autonomous board. 

The powers of the board, from the very nature of the 
case, must be partly legislative, as in the adoption of 
studies, books, and rules; partly executive, as in the elec- 
tion of teachers; and partly judicial, as in handling cases 
of discipline. The proper size of a city board is a ques- 
tion that cannot be answered off-hand. Something 
would depend on the size of the city and the traditions 
of the people; and much more on the manner in which the 
board organizes its business. Both of these points will 
be touched again in connection with that topic 

II. The Selection of Board- Members. — The problem of 
securing competent schoolboards in cities remains un- 
solved. Its importance and difficulty so impressed Dr. 
Philbrick that he wrote: "Without doubt, this is the 
supreme educational problem which remains for our 
educational statesmanship to grapple with." 1 There are 
two general modes of selecting board-members, each of 
which presents several species. 

First, popular election. Here the species are: (1) Elec- 
tion by ward or district ticket of members to represent the 
ward; (2) election by city ticket of members to represent 
the city; (3) the combination of the two foregoing plans — 
thus constituting a board composed of local members and of 
members-at-large. As respects these three plans, what is 
best administered is best; and no wise educator would rec- 
ommend that any one of them that is now working satis- 
factorily in any city should be dropped for either of the 
others. They are all in harmony with the prevalent 
political and social temper of American society; and there 
is no one of them that may not, under favorable condi- 

1 City School System in the United States, p. 16. 



266 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

tions, produce satisfactory results. Moreover, if a board 
were now first to be constituted in a rising city, a 
practical educator, if consulted, might find it hard to 
choose among them. 

In cities where the ward-ticket plan has led to gross 
abuses, it is common for citizens to look with favor on the 
general-ticket plan. Nor can it be denied that this plan 
is supported by some plausible arguments. It is said that 
the small men who work into the board from the wards 
never could be elected on a city ticket; that only men of 
some intellectual and moral qualifications could secure the 
party nominations; or that, if they did, they could not 
secure the requisite votes to elect them; that ward issues, 
ward " slates," and ward men, would give way to educa- 
tional men; — in a word, that men could no longer be 
elected to manage the public schools simply because they 
favored opening the saloons on Sunday or for some similar 
reason. 

It may be doubted whether this reasoning is not more 
specious than solid. The party candidates would be 
nominated by the city caucus; the nominations would go 
to the foot of the list, and so be made after the chief 
municipal officers had been designated; the caucus would 
have spent its strength and interest in these other nomin- 
ations; and we may well question whether the opportunity 
for improper men to secure the nominations would not be 
as good as now, if not better. Nor is it probable that 
citizens would be more independant of party when it 
came to voting than they now are. In some cities the 
board would consist wholly of members of one party. 
These are theoretical arguments; but to some degree at 
least they have been confirmed by experience. A culti- 
vated gentleman, who was at the time president of a city 
schoolboard, after listening courteously to the argument 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 267 

for the general-ticket plan, said, smiling, "It doesn't 

work so in ," (naming his own city). It is true that 

these objections would be partially overcome if the elec- 
tion were made a special one; but in that case new 
difficulties might arise. At all events, this plan will hardly 
furnish the looked-for means of escape from existing evils. 
The complexity of the combination plan is no doubt an 
objection to that. 

Secondly, appointment. Four varieties of this method 
are found in operation: Appointment (1) by the city 
council; (2) by the judges of the courts; (3) by the 
mayor; (4) by the mayor by and with the consent of the 
council. Although the first of these plans may work well 
in some instances, it cannot, for obvious reasons, be gen- 
erally recommended; but there are no a priori reasons 
why any one of the others should not produce satisfactory 
results. The argument in favor of an appointive board 
will be briefly sketched. 

The grand cause of bad schoolboards in cities is the 
same as the grand cause of bad city administration gener- 
ally, viz. : the triumph of politics over business methods. 
How complete that triumph is in many cities, all men 
know who are even casually acquainted with current 
municipal affairs. In fact, one of the pressing political 
questions is the thorough reform of municipal govern- 
ment. There is no reason to think that in this respect 
the schools have suffered more or less than other depart- 
ments of city government. It is to be observed, however, 
that the real nature of the evils that politics inflicts upon 
the school, or even upon city administration as a whole, 
is not always understood. No doubt partisan politics — 
Republican and Democratic politics — has much to answer 
for; but school politics — the application of the politician's 
methods to school questions — does far more harm. 



268 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Those men who have studied municipal questions most 
thoroughly are convinced that there is no ultimate means 
of escape from existing evils but by reducing the number 
of elections and elective officers, by limiting the power of 
the municipal legislature, and by materially increasing the 
power and responsibility of the chief municipal executive. 
The city of Philadelphia has already been thoroughly 
reorganized on what is called ' ' the Federal Plan ' ' ; and 
the city of Cleveland has sent a monster petition of its 
business and professional men to the State legislature, pray- 
ing for a similar reorganization. 1 The solution of city- 
school administration must be sought in the same quarter. 

The mayor of the city, or the judges, would be able to 
appoint a better school board than the people at large are 
able to elect. The abstract proposition that the people 
have abundant intelligence and virtue to name a board, 
although true, is nothing to the purpose. The concrete 
question, What are citizens doing, and likely to do, 
under the conditions actually existing in the cities, ridden 
and handicapped as they are by the politicians ? is the one 
to be considered. Furthermore, the mayor, if he failed 
to use his power, could be and would be held to a strict 
accountability. And the same of the judges. No doubt 
it will be objected that these officers, and particularly the 
mayor, would abuse the power; but cities can be named 
tliat never had a mayor who would dare to appoint such 
a board as the people habitually elect, save when aroused 
to spasmodic action by an accumulation of abuses. The 
mayor is one man, and an officer who can be arraigned at 
the bar of public opinion; while the demos is not respon- 
sible, since experience proves the futility of calling any 
power to account at its own bar. 

1 Such reorganization has been since accomplished, including 
the schools. 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 269 

There can be little, if any, doubt that the public would 
exercise far more control over the schools by the appoint- 
ive plan than it does or can exercise by the elective plan. 
It can compel the mayor to do what it cannot do itself. 
Guizot has shown that public opinion is sometimes far 
more efficacious than legal institutions. "It is very nat- 
ural, ' ' he says, ' ' that men should wish their intelligence 
to be prompt and apparent; that they should covet the 
credit of promoting success, of establishing power, of 
producing triumph. But this is not always either possi- 
ble or useful. There are times and situations when the 
indirect, unperceived influence is more beneficial, more 
practicable." 1 The present case is one of those in which 
influence will prove greater than power. 

With the change in the mode of appointment should 
also come a lengthening of the term of service. Now 
the legal term is commonly short, and changes of one 
kind and another tend to make the actual time still 
shorter. In the schoolboard of a certain city of a quar- 
ter of million people, sixty different men might have sat 
from 1882 to 1886, and fifty-one men did actually sit. 
The eighty-six years of aggregate service divided by the 
aggregate number of members gives an average period of 
one year and a half. Words can hardly tell the ignorance, 
incapacity, and friction that such a system introduces 
into the school administration. 

III. Mode of Board Administration. — The board must 
be clothed by the law with legislative, executive, and 
judicial powers and duties. One of the first things 
that it should do, however, is immediately to divest itself 
of most of its executive and judicial duties, and to con- 
fine itself mainly to legislation. The reasons why a 

1 History of Civilization, Lect. VI. 



27O STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

board is a bad executive body are obvious, and do not 
call for formal statement. But it is important to point 
out how its executive duties should be discharged. 

Acting as a legislature, the board should establish 
three executive departments, denning their powers and 
duties. 

The Department of Finance, Accounts, and Records. 

The Department of Construction, Repairs, and Supplies. 

The Department of Instruction and Discipline. 

The heads of the departments might be called the Aud- 
itor, the Superintendent of Construction, and the Superin- 
tendent of the Schools. Nothing will be said here of 
their qualifications further than that they should be men 
of decided ability and character, having each an expert 
knowledge of the important duties committed to their 
charge. 

These departments should be as permanent and effi- 
cient, relatively, as the executive departments of the 
State or National government; perhaps it would be wise 
to have them provided for in the school law itself; cer- 
tainly they should be put high beyond the reach of hasty 
board action. It is not necessary in this report to cata- 
logue the duties that would fall to them respectively; 
but it is necessary to insist that they should be the sole 
channels of executive administration, within their several 
limits. Judicial functions, so far as employes are con- 
cerned, should be delegated to the heads of these depart- 
ments, reserving the tight of appeal to the board, duly 
limited. 

School administration in cities is still organized essen- 
tially as it was when the cities were villages. While this 
organization answered the villages well enough, it is now 
far outgrown. To be sure, semblances of executive de- 
partments are found in these organizations, but they are 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 27 1 

embryonic and feeble. To a very great extent boards 
intrust administration to committees of their own number. 
This is not quite so absurd as it would be for a State leg- 
islature to attempt to carry on the whole State adminis- 
tration by means of standing committees, but the ab- 
surdity is of the same sort. 

Confining itself mainly to legislation, the board should 
do business like a legislature. It should appoint a few 
standing committees, say on finance, on teachers and sal- 
aries, on course of study and text-books, on construc- 
tion, on judiciary, and perhaps two or three more. De- 
tails can be readily settled when the main ideas have been 
agreed upon. At the same time, it will be well to indi- 
cate the method of procedure. 

For example, the Committee on Teachers and Salaries 
would, at the proper time, report the number of teachers 
needed the ensuing year, a schedule of salaries, and the 
amount of money required to pay them. After being 
printed, discussed, and amended, if necessary, the board 
would pass the bill, and the money voted would then be 
duly entered on the Auditor's books as subject to draft 
for this purpose. Similarly, the Committee on Construc- 
tion would report on repairs, on new buildings, or on 
supplies, and the procedure would be the same as before. 
By this plan the legislative work of the schools, as 
well as the executive work, would be far better done than 
now. At present the board spends a great deal of time 
in trifling acts of legislation. For the schoolboard of a 
great city to legislatate, in terms, on the purchase of a 
few feet of hose-pipe, or of a lawn-mower, is no less and 
no more absurd than it is to have twenty-five or thirty 
standing committees, many of them charged with ex- 
ecutive functions, simply in order that as many men may 
have the petty chairmanships. 



272 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Not only would this plan of organization secure far bet- 
ter results than are now secured, but it would save much 
time and annoyance. A meeting a month, on the average, 
would be all-sufficient. Again, this plan would render a 
board of considerable size not only unobjectionable but 
desirable; whereas a board that holds the major execu- 
tive duties in its own hands must be small to be efficient ; 
it is hardly an exaggeration to say, the smaller the better. 

The plan would give to the office of Superintendent of 
Schools that strength and dignity which its efficiency 
demands. As a matter of course, the superintendent 
would be clothed, either directly or indirectly, with power 
over the course of study, instruction, and discipline. The 
new Cincinnati rule should be incorporated in the organi- 
zation of the board, viz. : The superintendent of the pub- 
lic schools shall appoint all the teachers of said schools, 
by and with the consent of the board of education, and the 
superintendent or board may remove for cause. Possi- 
bly some would think it wise to go as far as the bill drawn 
up for the better government of the city of Cleveland, 
submitted to the Ohio legislature at its last session, which 
did not pass, ' ' The superintendent of schools shall have 
power to select his assistants, appoint all teachers, pre- 
scribe courses of study, and select text-books. " More- 
over, this bill abolished the board of education altogether, 
and gave the schools, as well as all other parts of the city 
government, a highly centralized organization. 

It is not pretended for a moment that the plan of ap- 
pointment and administration now sketched out rather 
than fully elaborated, if embodied in law, would relieve all 
the evils of the public schools. Nothing of the kind. But it 
is contended that they would lead to substantial reforms; 
better men, better methods, and better administration 



THE BUSINESS SIDE OF CITY SCHOOL SYSTEMS. 273 

would be secured. No doubt the objection would be made 
that the plan is undemocratic. But the charge would be 
untrue. The scheme proposed contains nothing that may 
not somewhere now be found in actual operation, save only 
the full development of the executive departments, and 
the practical limitation of the board to legislation. The 
board, of course, would choose the executive officers. 
Behind the whole organization would stand the public, as 
now, having less immediate power, but far more ultimate 
influence. The scheme is submitted to the Council in the 
belief that, in its essential features, it is the best one attain- 
able in the present state of our civilization. It is certainly 
in harmony with the best current thinking concerning 
city government in the United States. Nor is argument 
needed to show that it would give courage to teachers, and 
that it would call abler men than now into the school service, 
as board-members, instructors, and supervisors. 

Note. — I have somewhat changed my views on one or more 
minor points made in the foregoing report, but am more than ever 
convinced that the main argument is sound. Since 1888 the 
subject has occupied increasing attention. A few references may 
be given. 

White, Dr. E. E-: Report of the Committee on City School 
Systems, made to the National Council of Education at St. Paul, 
July, 1890. The Proceedings of the Council^ and of The National 
Educational Association for that year. 

Draper, President A. S.: Plans of Organization for School Pur- 
poses in Large Cities. A paper read at the meeting of the Depart- 
ment of Supervision at Boston. Proceedings of the National 
Educational Association for 1894. 

The same: On the Organization of City School Systems. Third 
division of the Report of the Committee of Fifteen. Educational 
Review, March, 1895. 

Mowry, W. A.: Powers and Duties of School Superintendents. 
Educational Review, January, 1895. 

See also Hand-Book of the Board of Education of the City of 
Cleveland, /S95, 1896, for the Reorganization Act of that city, 1892. 



XIV. 

THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERIN- 
TENDENT. 1 




HE American superintendent of schools, or of 
public instruction as he is sometimes called, is 
an officer sui generis. He is native to the 
soil. Perhaps his nearest congener is the 
inspector of schools found in England and France, Hol- 
land and Germany. But the duties of the superintendent 
and of the inspector are very different. He is, moreover, 
a recent evolution even in this country. The first city to 
appoint a superintendent that history mentions was Prov- 
idence, R. I., in 1839 k 2 Several towns in Ohio appointed 
superintendents in 1848; Boston and New York did so in 
1851; Cleveland in 1853, and Philadelphia not until 1883. 
How many such officers there are now in the United 
States no one can tell, but certainly many thousand. Not 
alone the great cities with their hundreds of teachers and 
tens of thousands of pupils, but even villages with a half- 
dozen teachers and two or three hundred pupils have 
them. Some effort has been made to distinguish the 
superintendents of the small towns by the older title of 
principal, but it has not been very successful. Still 
further, the superintendents of the country are as influen- 
tial as they are numerous. They have organized sections 
or departments of the educational associations, as well as 
associations of their own, for the discussion of the topics 
that most concern them as school officers, with a view to 

1 The Educational Review. January, 1894. 

2 Editor's preface to Dr. Pickard's School Supervision. 

274 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 275 

self -improvement and the formation of public opinion. 
They have their special classes in summer schools. 
Lectures on superintendence are given in normal schools, 
and in colleges offering pedagogical instruction. Far 
be3^oud any other class of persons of equal numbers, the 
superintendents directly shape the schools and public 
education. And this, too, without taking into account 
the State superintendents who, while they are only dwarfs 
compared with the European ministers of education, 
sometimes possess considerable power and still oftener 
wield large influence. Says Dr. W. T. Harris: "Before 
1837 Connecticut surpassed the other States in the educa- 
tion of its people. But the mighty engine of supervision 
wielded by a Horace Mann immediately turned the scale 
in favor of Massachusetts." 1 Still, notwithstanding the 
super intendency is now some fifty years old, and has 
attained such importance, its permanent character is by 
no means determined. On the contrary it is yet plastic; 
possibly it is even more plastic how than it was some 
years ago. Certainly the most thoughtful students of 
educational science are not clear as to what the future 
superintendent will be, and perhaps not clear as to what 
he ought to be. The time is therefore an opportune one 
to discuss the subject, not dogmatically but tentatively, 
with a view to casting light along the future track of 
opinion and practice. To do this we must first trace out 
the development of the office as shown in our educational 
history. This can be done all the more readily because 
all the steps, unlike some other evolutions, are open to 
the eye of daily observation in every State of the Union. 

Sec. 21, Chap. XLIV, of the School L-aws of Massachu- 
setts declares: "Every town shall, at its annual meeting, 

1 Editor's preface to School Supervision, by Dr. J. L. Pickard. 



276 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

or at a meeting appointed and notified by the selectmen for 
the purpose and held in the same month in which the annual 
meeting occurs, choose by written ballots a school com- 
mittee, which shall have the general charge and superin- 
tendence of all the public schools in the town. ' ' Many 
other powers are given to this committee, as to contract 
with teachers, choose text-books, establish courses of 
study, dispense discipline, and examine teachers; but the 
emphatic point now is that it has general charge and 
superintendence of all the public schools in its jurisdiction. 
This provision is not peculiar to Massachusetts; it is 
found in substance in State school laws generally, and 'is 
plainly necessary if the committees and the schools are to 
be efficient. This power to supervise the school or schools, 
lodged by law in the town committee or the district board, 
is the primal cell from which the school superintendency 
has been evolved. We are now to follow the steps by 
which it has been produced. First, however, it is impor- 
tant to observe that in the majority of towns and districts 
the country over this primitive state of things still exists. 
Perhaps one-half the schools are still supervised, so far as 
they are supervised at all, by committees or boards. These 
schools and boards we may dismiss at once, because they 
do not concern our special subject. 

It is probable that board supervision of schools fifty 
or sixty years ago was about what it is to-day. Some- 
times it was better and sometimes worse, as determined by 
the ability of the members of the board, their interest in 
education, their employments, and the traditions of the 
town or district; but, on the whole, it was very unsatis- 
factory, more nominal than real, and particularly so when 
the schools began to take on a higher form of organiza- 
tion. As the schools of cities and towns increased in size 
and complexity, things became worse instead of better. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 277 

There was no authority adequate to shape and administer 
the new organization. There was sad lack of unity and 
intelligent direction. Plainly, something must be done. 
There now ensued a differentiation; a short step was taken 
in the direction of system. 

Long before this time the principal, or master, had 
appeared; a head-teacher, who not only taught the highest 
class of pupils, but who also had general oversight 
of the building or house where a group of schools and 
teachers had been brought together. Progressively, the 
board had magnified the office of the principal, often 
making him a de facto supervisor of his house in respect 
to various subjects. Naturally, the new needs of the 
schools were first met, in part, by laying new duties upon 
him. He became a sort of rudimentary superintendent. 
The board had also distributed many of its functions 
among a number of committees, as the committees on 
teachers, on buildings, on course of study, etc. ; said com- 
mittees being charged with the general oversight and 
superintendence of the schools, subject to the controlling 
authority of the board. This state of things existed in 
Philadelphia until 1883, only the city was divided into 
many districts and many boards, and it still exists, with the 
same amendment, in Hartford, Conn. But sometimes the 
board went farther. For example, the Cleveland Board 
for many years constituted its secretary acting school 
manager, charging him to attend personally to all the 
ordinary affairs of the schools, under the direction of 
the board, and paying him a small salary for his services. 1 
One of these managers was a lawyer and another a mer- 
chant, both in active business. Presumably they paid 
more attention to the business side than to the educational 

1 Early History of Cleveland Public Schools, by Andrew Freese, 
p. 25. 



278 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

side of the schools; still they did not wholly overlook the 
latter, as admirable extracts from the reports still extant 
of one of them show. Besides, visiting committees of 
citizens were appointed by the board in the various school- 
districts, whose views and recommendations often had 
value and exercised no small influence. All these devices, 
including the conferring of new authority upon the princi- 
pal, were open confessions that the board could not ade- 
quately discharge its legal duty of supervision, and that 
a new step in the line of development was inevitable. This 
step produced the superintendent. 

All this time public education was increasing in com- 
plexity. Cities were growing, and increasing interest in 
education brought a relatively larger number of children 
to the school-houses. In a word, the school organization 
was expanding in every direction. Good schools were 
found in cities side by side with poor ones, owing to the 
fact that they had different principals and boards. The 
greatest confusion and inequality prevailed in cities where 
the other parts of the public service were well unified; the 
resulting evils became intolerable, and so school organiza- 
tion became absolutely necessary . These causes compelled 
the organization of the Cincinnati schools in 1829, the 
Columbus schools in 1845, and the Cleveland schools in 
1848. New York had no school board until 1842, and 
complete organization was not achieved until 1851. And 
naturally — nay, inevitably— the unification or consolida- 
tion of a group of city school districts, or the appearance of 
a school system, compelled the creation of the superin- 
tendency and the choice of a superintendent. His 
appearance at the educational headquarters marked the 
triumph of order and organization over division and chaos. 
He was the pledge of unity and uniform administration 
in the schools, and he stands for those ideas to-day. 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 279 

Perhaps it is commonly supposed that the superinten- 
dency is an evolution from the teaching function. If so, 
there could not be a greater mistake. The superintendent 
came forth from the school committee or board, as the 
history plainly shows. As a person, he may have been 
taken from the teachers, and commonly he was, though not 
always; but his official duties originated in the delegation 
to him of powers every one of which still belong to 
schoolboards and that they often exercise. Nay, 
more; in most cases where a superintendent is employed, 
the board could dispense with him and assume, or resume, 
the general charge and superintendence of the schools 
itself, if it saw fit. It is important to remember these 
facts. To quote Superintendent Stockwell, of Rhode 
Island: "It is extremely unfortunate for the welfare of 
our schools that, in the development in our State of the 
work and status of the superintendent of schools, the 
idea should have been allowed to gain a foothold that the 
office was in any way independent of the school committee, 
or that the occupant thereof was responsible to any other 
than the committee, for the whole theory of the office and 
of its duties has ever been to make it the medium of the 
committee's actions, to give opportunity for so unifying 
and simplifying the work of the committee, as to make it 
more effective in every respect, and thus to afford a con- 
stant and suitable medium for the expression of their 
will." 1 

It is a point well worthy of notice that, in the history 
of school organization, the high school has been an im- 
portant factor. The single district of a city could main- 
tain its separate system of elementary schools, but it could 
not maintain its separate high school, at least not without 

1 Quoted ih the Report of the National Commissioner of Educa- 
tion, 1886 87, p. 175. 



280 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

great cost and much inefficiency. Hence the demand for 
the more advanced grade of instruction compelled the 
creation of city high schools. Thus, Philadelphia had 
city high schools for many years side by side with district 
elementary schools; and such is still the case in Hartford. 
It cannot be doubted that in the field of popular education 
the high school has been a unifying agent of great power 
and usefulness. 

The powers and duties discharged by superintendents 
in different cities and towns are numerous indeed. When 
Dr. J. G. Fitch returned home from his visit to the United 
States a few years ago, he reported that the chief execu- 
tive officer and adviser of the local educational authority 
occupies a position wholly unlike that of any scholastic 
officer found in any country of Europe. Within his 
State, county, or city, he said, the superintendent com- 
bines in himself the characters of a minister of public 
instruction, an inspector of schools, a licenser of teachers, 
and a professor of pedagogy. Under the sanction of his 
board or committee he draws up regulations for the work 
of the various classes of schools, and often appends notes 
and comments prescribing the method in which each sub- 
ject shall be taught. With his staff of inspectors he con- 
ducts examinations for determining promotions of scholars 
from grade to grade. He sets questions, examines can- 
didates for the office of teacher in his district, and awards 
to them diplomas or certificates. He holds institutes, 
and instructs those teachers who have not been previously 
trained in the work of their special classes. He also con- 
ducts conferences of the older teachers, and gives lectures 
to them on the history and philosophy of education. He 
is assisted by a staff of inspectors and supervisors who 
visit schools under his direction and share with him the 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 28l 

duty of examining children for promotion. 1 Still this 
catalogue is not exhaustive. Sometimes the superinten- 
dent is the architect, or consulting-architect, of his board, 
its financial adviser, its superintendent of buildings and 
repairs, its clerk, and what not. 

It is important to observe that few of the multiform 
duties of the superintendent are defined by law. Consider- 
ing his prominence in public education, it must be con- 
fessed that his legal status is ill-defined and feeble. Such 
recognition as he has is rather indirect than direct. The 
Massachusetts Law, Section 43, provides: "A city by 
ordinance, and a town by vote, may require the school 
committee annually to appoint a superintendent, who, 
under the direction and control of said committee, shall 
have the care and supervision of the public schools; or 
the school committee of any city without such ordinance 
may appoint a superintendent by a majority vote of the 
whole board. ' ' In the same State two or more towns may, 
by a vote of each, form a district for the purpose of employ- 
ing a superintendent of public schools, who shall perform 
in each town the duties prescribed by law. These powers 
are permissive, not mandatory; and, so far as I have 
observed, this is the universal tenor of State school laws 
in relation to the subject. The Connecticut law directs 
the board to assign the duty of visiting the schools of the 
town to one or more of its members, who shall be called 
the acting school visitor or visitors; and then gives it the 
power to appoint a person not of its own number to do 
the same work. In Ohio, with two exceptions soon to 
be mentioned, the office is wholly in the hands of the 
local board. The general provision of law is, that the 
board of any district shall have full power, within certain 
limitations, to appoint a superintendent and assistant 

1 Notes on American Schools and Training Colleges, pp. 60-61. 



282 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

superintendents of schools, as well as teachers. In 
Michigan the recognition of the superintendent is still 
more feeble; the law does not even mention him. In 
this State, however, the city schools are generally 
organized under special charters. It would be strange 
indeed if the law should define very carefully the duties 
of an office whose very existence depends upon the local 
school authority. As a matter of necessity, the superin- 
tendent's duties are defined in the rules and regulations 
of the board creating his office and electing him. His 
status is determined by the manual, and not by the sta- 
tute-book. There can, I think, be little doubt that the 
superintendent of the future will have a better defined 
legal status than the superintendent of the present. And 
yet, in the nature of the case, details must always be left 
to the local authorities. In fact, the powers before enu- 
merated do not all belong to any one superintendent; 
special conditions have given the office special forms, and 
so they will continue to do. It would be difficult to 
draw up a list of powers that all superintendents do exer- 
cise or should exercise. 

It can hardly be supposed that the superintendent of 
the future will perform as many duties as the super- 
intendent of the past has performed, or as the superin- 
tendent of the present performs. The very law that 
compelled the board of a half century ago to divide 
the work — the law of specialization — will sooner or 
later compel a division of the duties that are now united 
in the superintendent's office. In the smaller cities 
especially the office has become decidedly top-heavy. 
Many superintendents are too much burdened, particu- 
larly with details, to do the best work. Relief may be 
sought, of course, in the multiplication of assistants; but 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 283 

the office is too much expanded for strength and efficiency. 
And it is when we come to the question, "What shall the 
new division be?" that the practical topic of this paper is 
brought most directly before our minds. 

It is clear at a glance that the powers and functions of 
the superintendent are divisible into the two categories of 
pedagogy and business. Perhaps the work of no other 
public officer is more evenly divided between professional 
and business affairs. Leaving out of account the zeros or 
nobodies, there are now, and for some time have been, 
two classes of superintendents; the line of division, which 
is by no means a hard-and-fast one, running between 
professional duties and business duties. Superintendents 
can be named who have won their reputation in the one 
field or in the other. Some superintendents are men of 
the office, others of the schoolroom and the lecture hall. 
Pedagogy is prett}^ sure to subordinate business adminis- 
tration, or vice versa. 

Now it seems clear that this line will become more 
clearly marked as time goes on. As cities grow in size; 
as school systems become unwieldy; as the popular de- 
mand for more man and woman and less machinery 
increases, the typical superintendent must be more of one 
thing or the other. He must be more of a school man or 
more of a business man. Which shall it be ? 

First, I see no reason to think that the future move- 
ment will be the same in all places. Quite the contrary. 
Special conjunctions of circumstances will sometimes turn 
the development in one direction and sometimes in the 
other. 

Secondly, strong arguments can be urged to show that 
the general direction will be toward the office and not 
toward the schools. The practical, or business, aspect of 
American life in almost all departments is very pronounced. 



284 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

College presidents are quite a different class of men now 
from what they were a half century ago. In the great 
colleges, at least, they are coming to stand more for ad- 
ministration, and less for scholarship, pedagogical attain- 
ments, and teaching. In all cities, and most of all in 
large ones, the tendency toward machinery and bureau- 
cracy in all kinds of work is strong. It is hard for the 
individual to assert his personal force. The superinten- 
dent's temptation to busy himself with manipulation is 
great. Nor can it be denied that there is an abundance 
of such work to be done. Already the schools of some 
cities have severely suffered in consequence of this ten- 
dency. Competent judges will hardly deny that the 
larger the system the less the personal force of the super- 
intendent is likely to be felt. In a city of moderate size a 
man of common mould may strongly influence his teachers 
and through them his pupils; but what can such a man 
do as the head of a great city system ? The position calls 
for a man of gigantic mental and moral force. It is my 
opinion, and one not hastily formed, that the best superin- 
tendence is now found in the smaller cities. There, as I 
believe, the superintendent who has ideas and personal 
force finds his largest opportunity. I may add that few 
spectacles are more pitiful than that of a little man at the 
head of one of the great school systems of the country. 
He is about as competent to vitalize and energize the 
schools as a pocket dynamo is to drive a city railroad. 

These considerations impel me to the conclusion that in 
the great cities the superintendent will, as a rule, tend to 
machinery and administration; that he will become even 
more an office man than he now is, and that he will be 
less known in the forum of educational thought than he 
is at present. I am making no onslaught upon the gentle- 
men who now occupy these positions. Undoubtedly some 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 285 

of them are educational men and do educational work; 
but as a class they have not proved themselves able to 
rise superior to their limitations. I cannot resist the 
impression that the superintendents of a dozen large cities 
that can be named exercise much less direct educational 
influence than did their predecessors thirty years ago. It 
is true that some method of dividing labor and of organ- 
izing forces may be invented that will turn the stream of 
movement the other way; but such does not appear to me 
to be the probability. 

We now come to cities of less size where the best super- 
vision is now found, and where the conditions for the 
development of the super intendency are most favorable. 
It seems probable that here the general movement will be 
along the other line of direction. The existing conditions 
make it possible; various causes conspire to bring about 
that result. It is a dictate of the highest wisdom. The 
good of the schools demands professional supervision; 
while it is plainly bad economy to employ a trained 
educational expert in such inferior capacities as clerical 
duties and supervising schoolhouse construction and re- 
pairs. Accordingly, the school supervision of many towns 
and cities will tend to become more professional than it 
has ever been. It cannot be denied or doubted that 
hitherto our superintendence has partaken somewhat of 
the nondescript character of the teaching body itself. 
But to be more definite: What duties will the super- 
intendent of the future perform? The present answer 
will be limited to considering rather briefly his relations 
to the schools in three or four different aspects. 

1. The sober common sense of the people, extending 
over a considerable period of time, may be a good general 
guide to what should be taught in the schools, since the 
schools must be kept in touch with the people; but 



286 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

there are many questions as to choice of studies, and 
adjusting the studies to one another in the course, that 
they can never settle. The order in which the several 
studies shall appear, the amount of work that shall 
be done in each study, and even the choice of studies 
can never be settled by a plebiscite. Nor can the average 
board of education, although its voice be regarded as 
expressing in a more clarified form the popular mind and 
will, intelligently settle these questions. Especially are 
both the plibiscite and the vote of the board utterly help- 
less when parallel courses are to be adjusted in high 
schools. The course of study calls for expert knowledge 
and experience, and this call the superintendent must 
meet. Questions relating to studies promise to be more 
troublesome in the future than in the past; the pressure 
upon the course is all the while increasing; and we may 
fairly expect therefore that the superintendent will be more 
prominent in settling these questions than he has been. 

2. Every argument that can be adduced showing that 
the superintendent, guided by the popular intelligence 
and advised by his board and corps of teachers, should 
make the course of study, tends with equal force to show 
that, with the same limitations, he should also choose the 
text-books: and with even greater force, because the text- 
books are the course in a very much more definite and 
practical sense than the course so-called itself. The 
course is but a vague outline; the books are minute and 
definite. 

But there is good reason why the superintendent does not 
now exercise the same influence over books that he exer- 
cises over the course of study. There is "money" in the 
books and not in the course; and wherever there is money 
disturbing influences manifest themselves. While the 
publishing interest, through its intelligence and enter- 



THE AMERICAN SCHOOL SUPERINTENDENT. 287 

prise, has done much good it has also done some harm. 
Sometimes it thrusts itself between the superintendent 
and his board, the newspapers, or the public. Sometimes 
it enters the political field to influence elections. Some- 
times it corrupts the moral sense of teachers and superin- 
tendents through its largesses of various kinds. Enough 
has been said to suggest that the control of the superin- 
tendent of the future over books will not be as large as 
his control over studies; also to suggest why it will not 
be wise for him to seek the same control in the one sphere 
that will be cheerfully accorded to him in the other — 
unless he can in some way be protected against foreign 
interference. 

3. Superintendents of different cities now stand to the 
appointment of teachers in very different relations. The 
superintendents of Cincinnati and Cleveland nominate all 
teachers, and the board simply confirms or rejects their 
nominees. The Superintendent of Brooklyn, on the 
other hand, has nothing whatever to do with the appoint- 
ment of teachers. His only check is, that he examines 
and certificates them. Commonly, however, the superin- 
tendent and the committee on teachers act together in 
making nominations to the board, the first rather taking 
the initiative. The superintendent ought in reason, if a 
fit man for his place, to have large control of the teaching 
force. Far more than anyone else, the public hold him 
responsible for the work done in the schools, and it is 
surely a hardship to deny him , adequate power. At the 
same time there are excellent reasons why his power is 
more limited, and is likely to be more limited, here than 
in some other matters. Personal elements play a con- 
siderable part in appointments. Cincinnati and Cleveland 
have been referred to. The Cincinnati law gives the 
superintendent large power, and also exposes him to a 



288 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

danger that he should not be called upon to confront 
unless he can in some way be shielded against it. The 
Cleveland law gives the superintendent the same power, 
and also affords him immediate protection, since it makes 
good behavior his tenure of office. This law creates the 
office of superintendent and gives the incumbent a firm 
legal status, while the Cincinnati law merely assumes 
that such an office exists. Both laws, and particularly 
that of Cleveland, have excited no little interest among 
educators. The rule or method of appointing teachers is 
not of great importance, provided always that the superin- 
tendent shall exercise a due and reasonable influence. 

4. Finally, we may expect to see the superintendent of 
the future more prominent in the field of instruction than 
the superintendent of the past has been. I do not mean 
that he himself will teach more directly, but that he will 
teach more indirectly. Here there is little to interfere 
with him; here the need of professional help on the part 
of teachers, especially the young and inexperienced, 
is very great; here the progress of educational science 
opens up increasing demands, and here, as I believe, is 
the field in which he will find his greatest opportunity — 
to instruct, inspire, and lead his teachers. Just what 
this instruction and leadership should be, space cannot be 
taken to discuss, but only to say that it must be profes- 
sional. 

The bearing of all this upon the superintendent's abil- 
ities and preparation is obvious. He must have the 
requisite talents for getting on with people, but he need 
not be a "manager," a "manipulator," or a" school poli- 
tician." But there will be an imperative demand for 
more thorough education, for wider culture, and especially 
for fuller instruction, on his part, in the science, the art, 
and the history of education. 



XV. 

THE EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF 
THE MODERN STATE.* 




ITHOUT a doubt the most impressive politi- 
cal fact of the last hundred years is the 
enormous advance made by the forms and the 
spirit of democracy over the larger part of 
the civilized world. 

Sir James Stephen, of the English Bench, says two 
different views may be taken of the relation between 
rulers and their subjects. According to one view, "the 
ruler is regarded as the superior of the subject, as being by 
the nature of his position presumably wise and good, the 
rightful ruler and guide of the whole population." 
According to the other view, ' ' the ruler is regarded as 
the agent and servant, and the subject as the wise and 
good master, who is obliged to delegate his power to the 
so-called ruler because, being a multitude, he cannot use 
it himself. ' ' Which one of these two theories is the true 
theory, does not now concern us; but we are concerned 
to know the fact that, since 1775, with temporary revul- 
sions towards the older view, the newer one has been 
going on conquering and to conquer. Sir Henry Sumner 
Maine, commenting in 1885 upon the words of Sir James 
Stephen, told but the truth when he said : ' ' Russia and 
Turkey are the only European States which completely 
reject the theory that governments hold their powers by 

'An address delivered at Elgin, Illinois, before the Northern 
Illinois Teachers' Association, April, 1891. 



29O STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

delegation from the community, the word ' community ' 
being somewhat vaguely understood, but tending more 
and more to mean at least the whole of the males of full 
age living within certain territorial limits. This theory, 
which is known on the Continent as the theory of national 
sovereignty, has been fully accepted in France, Italy, 
Spain, Portugal, Holland, Belgium, Greece, and the 
Scandinavian States. In Germany it has been repeatedly 
repudiated by the Emperor and his powerful Minister, 
but it is to a very great extent acted upon." England, 
he says, stands by herself. While the law and the con- 
stitution speak the old view concerning the relation of 
ruler and ruled, "there is no country in which the newer 
view of government is more thoroughly applied to prac- 
tice." 1 The Queen of England reigns, but she does not 
rule. On this side of the Atlantic, the change is still more 
complete. With the downfall of constitutional monarchy 
in Brazil, the whole American Continent, except the 
British Possessions, has become republican in form as it 
was before democratic in spirit ; while the British Posses- 
sions are democratic in spirit and all but republican in 
form. 

Remembering that man is nowhere more conservative 
than in religion, we cannot say that the change is less 
marked in Church than in State. The State churches 
have not been dis-established, nor have they changed 
their forms; but beneath the ancient theological formulae 
and ecclesiastical organizations, great changes of faith 
and feeling have been occurring. The bishops still hold 
their chairs, but their tone is very different from the tone 
that they held in the Middle Ages. Moreover, the type 
of bishop has materially changed. Religious faith and 
obedience are shifting from the basis of dogma and 

1 Popular Government, pp. 7, 8. 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 291 

authority to a basis of visible adaptation to the needs of 
individual life and social well-being. Undeniably, the 
Church as well as the State is becoming democratized. 

But perhaps democracy has won its greatest triumphs 
in education. At least, we cannot fail to see them, no 
matter under what aspect we view the subject. 

First, the new spirit is seen in studies and school curric- 
ula. The policy of the kingdom of education a century 
ago was very narrow and exclusive. The classics, math- 
ematics, some philosophy, natural and mental, and a little 
rhetoric, constituted the uniform course of study in all 
schools of liberal learning. The exclusiveness of the old 
curriculum, and the retardation of modern studies, were 
largely due to the contemptuous feeling for everything 
not branded " classical," which came in with the revival 
of letters and was such a pronounced feature of human- 
ism. But the power of the old tradition has been broken; 
the new studies jostle the old ones; the humanities, old 
and new, mathematics, science, history, philosophy, and 
literature compete for students on equal terms. Numer- 
ous new curricula have been established; electives have 
received full recognition; and the narrow idea that 
' ■ course of study ' ' once conveyed has been set aside. 
The same thing is seen in the extraordinary differentia- 
tion of the school. Once there was but a single t}^pe ; 
now there are many types, to say nothing of the variety 
of work that is done in schools of the same name. 

The democratic spirit has powerfully affected the 
teaching force. Women, for example, were not employed 
as teachers in antiquity. It was the same way in the 
Middle Ages. The exceptions in either period, as that of 
Hypatia at Alexandria, and the young ladies who 
sometimes read their fathers' lectures to students at 



2g2 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Bologna, but prove the rule. Now all this is changed. 
Ninety per centum of the public school teachers of Mass- 
achusetts are women, and 68 per centum of those of 
Illinois. In the whole country the ratio is 63 women to 
'37 men, but in the cities it is more than 90 women to fewer 
than 10 men. In England the ratio is 69 to 31. Women 
are also asking and receiving admittance to the ranks of 
higher instruction. Again, at the opening of the modern 
era the clergy monopolized the teaching function. Edu- 
cation was ecclesiastical in a triple sense; in matter taught, 
in the atmosphere and ideals of the school, and in teachers. 
The demolition of these barriers, or the laicizing of 
the schools, is one of the striking facts of educational 
history. 

But it is in the number and character of pupils that the 
most stupendous change is seen. Once, half of the 
human race was summarily ruled out with the sweeping 
assertion that they did not need education and could not 
in fact receive it. At Athens the only highly educated 
women were the heterae; at Rome woman's position 
was better than in Greece, but woman has had to await 
the nineteenth century for her full educational enfran- 
chisement. It has come at last. In 1888 as many as 
29.3 per cent, of all the students pursuing education in 
the universities and colleges of the United States were 
women. In the elementary and secondary schools, girls, 
on the whole, considerably outnumber boys. In European 
countries the showing is not so favorable, but in those 
countries the old spell is completely broken. I can see 
no good reason why, in the United States, the women 
studying in colleges should not in another generation 
equal the men. 

But still more, antiquity made no attempt to teach the 
major part of the males. The Oriental nations doomed 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 293 

the masses of their population to an irremediable ignor- 
ance and bondage. The classic civilizations rested upon 
an enormous basework of slavery. Education was little 
more than a class privilege in Athens. When Pericles 
said thought was the distinguishing feature of the Athe- 
nians, he meant of the few thousands who swarmed around 
the bema to hear his speeches and into the agora to vote 
on public questions. The old writers are not wanting 
in humane and liberal sentiments; very elevated views of 
virtue, character, and enlightenment are found in the great 
ethical writers of antiquity; but the pages of Plato and 
Aristotle are heavy with the iteration of the essential 
baseness of the majority of mankind. The constant 
assumption is, that any attempt to educate and lift up this 
mass of ignorance and depravity would be hopeless and 
foolish, — as indeed it was until the Son of Man, breath- 
ing into men the enthusiasm of humanity, gave to the 
world a new ideal and a new motive power. Until recent 
times the whole conception of education was narrow in the 
extreme. The idea that any system could be devised power- 
ful enough to reach and to educate the whole mass of men — 
to permeate it with light and knowledge — never began to 
assume a practical shape, and was by no means deemed 
generally advisable, until the new spirit had changed the 
temper and the ideals of the world. This change has not 
been wrought in the last one hundred years; centuries have 
been required to effect it; but, at last the conviction that 
society, from top to bottom, can be, and must be, educated, 
has taken fast hold of men's minds. We have learned 
the meaning of education as our fathers learned the mean- 
ing of freedom, which was its necessary precursor; and 
an educational orator of Curran's genius might equal 
the immortal passage in which he dignified the genius 
of universal emancipation. 



294 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

L,et me call brief attention to one of the most interesting 
educational movements of the times. I mean University 
Extension, which has made so much headway in England, 
and is now beginning to get a foothold in the United 
States. This is an attempt to carry the university, by 
means of lectures, examinations, and courses of prescribed 
reading, to people who cannot come to the university. 
It is a democratic movement in the best sense of the word, 
and recalls the noble spirit that attended the original 
establishment of universities. We read that there were 
at one time 20,000 students at Bologna, an equal number 
at Paris, and 30,000 at Oxford; and any man who has 
seen how pervasive, how democratic, how stirring, that 
great intellectual movement was, and especially if he has 
read the story of the wandering scholars, has no difficulty 
in seeing how these results were reached. 

The paths by which men reach the grand conclusion 
are as numerous as the other elements entering into 
modern education. The political economist tells us that 
education promotes a man's efficiency as a producing 
agent; the moralist says he must be forf ended against the 
approaches of evil; the statesman emphasizes the fact 
of citizenship; the political philosopher says all the 
members of the State have an interest in one another; the 
minister of religion recognizes the relations of mental en- 
lightenment and the religious life, while the educator 
sums up all in the declaration that a man must be edu- 
cated because he is a man. 

To place in a graduated scale the various forces that 
have contributed to create the genius of universal edu- 
cation would be no easy task. However, no man who is 
really in sympathy with the great democratic movement 
of the century is likely to place the political force below 
the summit. One of the two golden sentences relating to 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 



295 



education in Washington's Farewell Address, is: " In 
proportion as the structure of the government gives place 
to public opinion, it is essential that public opinion should 
be enlightened. ' ' The sentiment is as wide as democracy. 
The wisest men everywhere see that democracy is not a 
universal form of government; that it is not a machine that 
can be wound up once in two or four years, and then be 
suffered to run alone; but that it is adapted only to certain 
conditions, one of which is a high average intelligence and 
morality, and that universal suffrage means universal 
education. 

This rapid review brings us to the question that forms 
the heart of the present address: How shall the people be 
educated ? Or, more definitely, how shall universal edu- 
cation be provided ? Before attempting to answer, let us 
get a more exact idea of what, on the material side, na- 
tional education means. Five or six statistical items from 
the ' ( Report of the Commissioner of Education ' ' for 
1887-88 will answer our purpose. 

That year there were in the United States 219,063 pub- 
lic school buildings, and 11,952,209 pupils in the schools, 
exclusive of high schools (an item that was not adequately 
reported) , with an average daily attendance of 7,852,607 
pupils. These pupils were taught by 347,292 teachers; 
the valuation of public school property was $297,481,328, 
several States being omitted ; and the total school expendi* 
ture of the year, not including payments on bonded in- 
debtedness, was $122,455,252. The State of Illinois had 
12,208 school houses and 15,744 teachers; 751,349 pupils 
in the schools, averaging 518,092 in daily attendance; a 
total school expenditure, counted as before, of $10,279,- 
374; school property valued at $24,940,783; and a per- 
manent school fund of $10,383,133. These statistics are 



296 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

three years old. The people of the country are now 
expending for public schools more than $130,000,000 an- 
nually. 1 Still, the showing of the cost of education is 
not complete, until we add the statistics of private schools, 
church schools, and of colleges and universities — the whole 
making a total that is simply overwhelming. Nothing 
could show more conclusively the hold that education has 
taken of the American mind. And yet in many States 
the supply is very defective. 

How shall this enormous burden be borne ? It is very 
clear that it cannot be left to individual effort. For, first, 
a considerable number of persons take no interest in the 
education of their children; secondly, many have no 
proper ideals of educational ends and requirements;. and, 
thirdly, the provision of education for their families is far 
beyond the pecuniar}^ ability of a great number of people. 
The notion that education can be left to individuals must 
be summarily dismissed. 

But it has often been said, and will often be said again, 
that, were the State to step aside, voluntary associated 
effort would come to the relief of individual initiative. It 
is argued that voluntaryism is now a powerful educational 
agent; that it is at the same time greatly weakened through 
State interference; and that it is just as competent to 
furnish schools and education as it is to furnish churches 
and religious teaching. Herbert Spencer 2 has labored 
hard to establish this doctrine, but, fortunately, he has 
failed to impress the public mind with it, and has not suc- 
ceeded even in carrying the laissez faire philosophers all 
with him. Still it demands a closer scrutiny. 

In all countries where the moral energies of the people 
have not been broken down or dwarfed by paternal gov- 

1 For the year 1893-94, the total expenditure was $170,384,173 

2 See Social Statics. 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 297 

eminent, voluntaryism is a prodigious power, capable of 
accomplishing marvels, not only in industry and com- 
merce, but also in morals, education, and religion. Wit- 
ness England and the United States. The Catholic 
Church even, which had been accustomed for centuries 
to depend upon the State, is surprised to discover in this 
country how potent voluntaryism is. All honor to the 
churches and associations that have made this great dis- 
covery. What is more, at a time when multitudes of our 
fellow-citizens, weary of independence and self -helpful- 
ness, are loudly invoking the Genius of Paternalism to 
bless the country, let us beware of weakening this incom- 
parable agent, to which so much that is great in American 
civilization is due. 

But a moment's reflection must make it clear to every 
man other than a hopeless doctrinaire that voluntary en- 
terprise cannot educate the whole people. L,ook again at 
the statistics showing the vastness of the undertaking and 
the immense resources required to compass it. Look into 
the great cities, with their hundreds of school houses, 
thousands of teachers, hundreds of thousands of school 
children, and enormous .school expenditure. Public- 
spirited as are the citizens of Chicago, and immense as 
are their resources, the proposition to abandon the public 
school system of the city and go back to private enter- 
prise, would be no less absurd than the proposition to 
throw away the steam fire-engines and go back to buckets 
and hand machines. On this point the testimony of ex- 
perience is absolutely conclusive. No people that relied 
exclusively upon voluntary agencies for education ever 
became educated. Every educated people have been com- 
pelled to invoke a power higher than private enterprise. 
The Church, of course, has been the chief voluntary 
agent in Christian countries; but the Church has never 



298 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

undertaken, even if it has ever conceived, the task of 
educating the whole people. On the contrary, the Church 
has commonly put forth its mightiest energies when stim- 
ulated by the most formidable competition from some non- 
ecclesiastical source. 

On this branch of the argument the history of England 
is of peculiar interest. Down to sixty years ago, volun- 
tary effort was the sole educational resource. It produced 
colleges, universities, and secondary schools that are the 
glory of England; but in the field of popular education its 
highest achievements were the Dame School, celebrated 
by Shenstone in "The Schoolmistress," 1 and the Sunday 
Schools organized by Robert Raikes, at least until it was 
quickened by the demand for national education. But 
even the Dame Schools and Sunday Schools were miser- 

1 " In every village mark'd with little spire, 

Embower' d in trees, and hardly known to Fame, 
There dwells in lowly shed, and mean attire, 
A matron old, whom we Schoolmistress name. 



' The noises intermix 'd, which thence resound, 

Do Learning's little tenement betray: 

Where sits the dame, disguis'd in look profound, 

And eyes her fairy throng, and turns her wheel around. 



1 One ancient hen she took delight to feed, 
The plodding pattern of the busy dame; 
Which, ever and anon, impell'd by need, 
Into her school, begirt with chickens, came! 
Such favor did her past deportment claim; 
And, if Neglect had lavish 'd on the ground 
Fragment of bread, she would collect the same; 
For well she knew, and quaintly could expound, 
What sin it were to waste the smallest crumb she found.' 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 299 

ably inadequate in number. The masses of the people 
were wholly untaught. Sidney Smith declared "there 
was no Protestant country in the world where the educa- 
tion of the poor had been so grossly and infamously 
neglected as in England ' ' ; Malthus -said it was ' c a great 
national disgrace that the education of the lower classes of 
the people should be left mainly to a few Sunday schools' ' ; 
while Dean Alford wrote as late as 1839: "Prussia is 
before us; Switzerland is before us; France is before us; 
there is no record of any people on earth so highly civil- 
ized, so abounding in arts and comforts, and so grossly, 
generally ignorant as the English." And all the time 
representative Englishmen regarded the situation with 
perfect complacency. Lord Eldon, in 1807, thought popu- 
lar education one of the worst delusions of the times, and 
the Archbishop of Canterbury exhorted the Lords not to 
shake the foundations of the established religion by 
introducing innovations. The charity schools were pro- 
nounced all-sufficient. Bishop Horsley said in the House 
of Lords, in 1795, that he did not know what the 
mass of people in any country had to do with the laws 
but to obey them; and Lady Harrowby, in 1832, asked 
how it mattered what the people thought or said 
about public matters, provided the army could be 
depended upon. In 1807, when the subject of popular 
education was first brought before the House of Commons, 
the majority, according to Sir Samuel Romily, thought it 
was better for the people to remain in ignorance. The 
accomplished Windham opposed the pending bill because 
some mutineers in the Channel fleet had read the news- 
papers; while another orator declared that the French 
Revolution was due to the people's reading books. 
"Blackwood's Magazine" opposed popular education 
because it would make the people restless and uneasy; 



300 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

because, since ignorance is the mother of contentment, 
they should receive only a religious education that would 
render them patient, amiable, and moral, and relieve the 
hardship of their present lot by the prospect of a bright 
eternity. 

In 1882 Parliament voted 20,000 pounds sterling for 
education. The grant was repeated several years, and 
then gradually increased. Religious partisans now took 
alarm; men of the Establishment, because they dreaded 
the tendencies of popular education, and Dissenters, 
because they feared that the Establishment would mon- 
opolize the grants. The result was the organization of a 
movement composed of men who declared State education 
not only wrong in principle but unnecessary and harm- 
ful in practice. The Voluntary ists strove to show their 
faith by their works. They beat loudly the drum 
ecclesiastic. Never, perhaps, was a harder struggle 
made to reach a similar end. But all in vain; the experi- 
ment was tried out to the end, and ended in confessed 
failure. While it was in course of trial, Lord Macaulay 
delivered in the House of Commons, in 1847, the cele- 
brated speech on education which was one of the causes 
of his defeat at Edinburgh at the next election. This 
masterly speech should be read by every man who places 
faith in the sufficiency of voluntary education. Macaulay 
described, as only he could describe, the ignorance of the 
English masses. Of 260,000 people married in 1844, 
he said, more than 100,000 signed their marriage papers 
with a cross. His impassioned thought burst out in 
passages like this: 

I do believe that the state of education among the common 
people of this country ought to make us ashamed, and that we 
should present a melancholy spectacle to any very enlightened 
foreigner visiting our shores. Under these circumstances, what is 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 301 

said ? We are told that the principle of non-interference and of 
free competition will be as powerful a stimulus to education as it 
is to trade. Why, this morning I received a paper containing 
reasons for opposing the present grant; and it is said that if we only 
wait with patience, the principle of free competition will do all that 
is necessary for education. We have been waiting with patience 
since the Heptarchy. How much longer are we to wait ? Are we 
to wait till 2847 or 3847 ? Will you wait till patience is exhausted? 
Can you say that the experiment which has been tried with so 
little effect has been tried under unfavorable circumstances? Has 
it been tried on a small scale, or for a short period ? You can say 
none of these things; and I defy you to show that you ought to 
apply to education the principle of free competition. The principle 
is not applicable. 

Not the least effective parts of this speech were the 
passages in which the orator told what the Scotch and the 
New Bnglanders had done in the field of popular educa- 
tion by the invocation of the power of the State. 

Conservative as the English people are, and well 
schooled in laissez-faire, they have been compelled more 
and more to abandon competition as an educational agent, 
and to call in the agent that had already produced such 
great results in Germany, in Scotland, and in New Eng- 
land. The Forster Act of 1870 was a long step forward; 
and the results immediately following it were, no doubt, 
the greatest of their kind ever produced by a single enact- 
ment. According to Sir Charles Reed, 1 the London 
School Board alone, in the years 1871-1880, provided 
facilities for the schooling of 225,236 children; and 
similar results were seen all over England and Wales, to 
which alone the Act applied. The Forster Act, which 
was at the time by no means satisfactory to the ardent 
champions of public education, has been strengthened 
both by supplementary legislation and by better adminis- 

1 See his statement made to the London School Board, Sept. 
30, 1880. Memoir of Sir Charles Reed, by his son, C. E. B. Reed. 



3<D2 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

tration. And yet dissatisfaction with what has been done 
is all the time growing. Parliament must go still further, 
as is shown by the admission made within the year by 
leading Tory statesmen, including L,ord Salisbury, that 
the children's pence, or rate bills as we should call them, 
which produce some ^2,000,000 annually, must be 
disregarded and an equal amount be furnished by the 
treasury. Such legislation will be the next important 
step in the history of popular education in England. 1 

So we come back again to our text. How shall the 
education of the people be provided for? The only 
answer to this question is, the State, the Organized Nation, 
the Embodied People, acting through the government. 
The State can effect the result. It can create and 
administer the necessary educational institutions. It can 
furnish the needed funds. It can wield the required coer- 
cive authority. Practically there is no limit to what 
it may do, save alone the popular will and the resources 
of civilization. Furthermore, the government is the only 
agent that can do this work. No people ever became 
educated that did not invoke its authority. No people 
ever invoked it in good earnest that did not find it suffi- 
cient. In some of the German States the work is done 
so thoroughly that practically illiteracy does not exist. 
Dr. Stanley Hall says of Prussia: 

We cannot study too carefully here the chief feature of this 
great educational State. Its magnificent campaign against ignor- 
ance opens with matchless vigor. Every parent must send his 
child to school from six to fourteen — in many places they still pay 
a trifling monthly fee — or he is, as L,uther held, an enemy of the 
State. He might almost as well refuse to pay taxes or fight an 
invading foe. In 1888 of about 5,000,000 German children only 
5,143 were absent from school without cause. In Berlin in the 

1 See note, p. 312. 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 303 

same year 14 boys and one girl of school age evaded the law, but 
this result was secured by fining 1,020 parents and arresting 1,088. 
Illiteracy proper is practically extinguished. l 

It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that nations have 
become educated in the ratio that they have enlisted gov- 
ernment in the work. How significant are the expen- 
ditures for public elementary education in England and 
Wales for the last twenty years. 

1869-70. £1,673,306 

1879-80 6,327,460 

1888-89 9,043,565 

The parliamentary grants increased from £20,000 in 
1832 to £3,684,000 in 1890. In 1869 the number of child- 
ren in average attendance in elementary schools was 
1,062,299; in 1888 it was 3,614,967— an increase of three 
and a third times in nineteen years. Voluntary education 
has become practically stationary. 

The recent educational history of France teaches the 
same lesson. In 1881 primary education was made com- 
pulsory, and in 1882 gratuitous. These are the expendi- 
tures for public education of all kinds at the dates men- 
tioned: 

1857 16,523,969 francs. 

1878 59,216,449 

1888 .....146,000,000 

State action has often stimulated voluntary action. It 
was so in England in the palmy days of voluntaryism. It 
is so to-day in the United States. Far be it from me to 
belittle the educational zeal of the Catholic Church; but 
does any man for a moment suppose that Church would 
ever have built up its present schools, capable of teaching 
600,000 pupils, had it not been incited thereto by the 
public schools ? 

1 The Pedagogical Seminary, Vol. I., p. 3. 



304 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Nor can the State afford to be an idle spectator in this 
matter. In ancient States dominated by absolute despots, 
or in medieval States dominated by petty tyrants, 
that was possible, but the character of the State has 
greatly changed in modern times. Democratic forms, 
and still more the democratic spirit, has become a prodi- 
gious social force. In the modern State no man lives to 
himself and no man dies to himself; every man affects and 
is affected by every other. The safety of the State, the 
well-being of the whole people, the preservation of the 
government, demand popular education. I^ord Macaulay 
summed up the argument in the epigram, "If the State 
may hang, the State may educate." 

The conclusion then is this: A State has the same right 
to educate the people — that is, to educate itself — that it 
has to perform any other great public function or office. 
The arguments which prove that it should provide police, 
health inspectors, and an army, prove that it should pro- 
vide schools and education. Moreover, voluntary effort 
is just as competent to defend and police society as it is to 
educate its members. All these incomparable public in- 
terests call for the organized efforts of the sovereign 
nation. 

That universal education means State education, is so 
demonstrably true that it is hard to see how any modern 
mind can resist the proposition. One almost feels like 
apologizing for seriously arguing it; still, it is important 
to perceive clearly just what State education means. It 
does not mean the education of the people by an abstrac- 
tion called the State; it does not mean the education of the 
many by the few or the few by the many; it means merely 
that the people, or the nation, educate themselves through 
the same agency that they use to secure the peace of their 
streets, to defend their coasts, to carry their letters, to 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 305 

conduct scientific surveys, to found libraries, and to care 
for the unfortunate classes — that is, the Government. 

State education involves several corollaries that should 
be clearly stated. 

First, State education does not necessarily mean the 
complete absorption of education by State schools. While 
the State must see that its members are adequately edu- 
cated, it may leave the education of those children whose 
parents prefer it to non-State schools. Private schools 
and Church schools, like public-schools, are the legiti- 
mate subjects of criticism; but to assail them as illegiti- 
mate or useless argues a narrowness that, under changed 
circumstances, would also assail the public schools. Un- 
doubtedly, such schools are a valuable and an indispensa- 
ble part of the educational supply of society. It is to be 
observed, however, that the State has the undoubted 
right, in view of its sovereignty, to assert a general con- 
trol over non-State schools. Whether it shall exercise 
this right or not, is a practical question to be answered 
when and where it arises. The answer must depend 
upon the conditions present in a given case. 

Secondly, the State school must be conducted on the 
same principle as other branches of the government. It 
is a civil institution, and must be conducted on the same 
lines as other civil institutions. The meaning of this is 
that the State school must teach those subjects that society 
wants to have taught, and that affect the welfare of the 
State. Whatever does not come within this compass must 
be eliminated. The common school is for the common 
benefit, and it must meet common wants. No man worth 
regarding now teaches the doctrine of the social contract; 
still all teachers of political philosophy recognize the fact 
that practical government is impossible, particularly in 



306 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

democratic societies, save on the principle of striking an 
average. Only by putting the State school on distinctly 
civil ground can we logically defend it. Fortunately, the 
margin of possible difference of opinion as to what shall 
be taught in the public school is a narrow one. Every- 
body says the elementary branches of learning must be 
taught, and the universal morality; while there is a grow- 
ing conviction that the State must also provide secondary 
and higher instruction. 

Unfortunately, this view is obnoxious to some excel- 
lent people. As though that were a terrible thing, they 
say that it secularizes the school. Will these people 
kindly go back a few centuries to the time when the State 
was a semi-ecclesiastical institution ? To the time when 
every function of government was much more theologi- 
cal or religious than the American school now is ? The 
theory of the State, the ends of the State, and to a great 
extent the motives of the State were ecclesiastical, while 
a majority of public functionaries were ecclesiastics. But 
the modern State has been both secularized and laicized 
in these particulars. Even the Church is regarded by 
the statesmen of some countries mainly from the civil 
standpoint. The old political philosophy is gone. Re- 
ligious wars have ceased. Not only Becket and Eangton 
have vanished, but also Pole, Wolsey, Mazarin, and 
Richelieu. Once there were as many lords spiritual in 
the House of Eords as lords temporal; now there are one- 
tenth as many, and these exercise little influence save on 
ecclesiastical subjects. No English ecclesiastic has been 
L,ord Chancellor since the seventeenth century, and not 
one has held a high office of state since the beginning of 
the eighteenth. Since 1801 the law has forbidden men 
once admitted to orders in the Established Church to sit 
in the House of Commons. It has taken many steps to 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 307 

effect these momentous changes. Every one of them has 
been resisted by men of the ecclesiastical mental habit. 
But can any man in possession of a modern mind doubt 
that both politics and religion have been great gainers in 
consequence ? Or can such men doubt that, eventually, 
the State school must be put on the same footing as the 
other departments of the civil administration? Or, again, 
can he doubt that this will be for the ultimate advantage 
of all concerned ? 

It will be said that the school differs from other State 
institutions in this, — that it is an educational agent and 
has to do w T ith the formation of character. The reply is, 
that the putting of other civil institutions on a civil foun- 
dation was once opposed as strenuousty, and with the 
same argument. Besides, the State can do its full duty 
as a moral teacher in the civil school. 

But some will persist that man is a religious being, and 
requires a religious education. Let this be frankly and 
fully admitted. The answer is that the Church exists for 
the very purpose of forming the religious character and 
directing the religious lives of men. If this reply is not 
satisfactory, possibly we can reach a more definite one. 

In Europe the relation of the Church to the school has 
received far more attention than in the United States. 
One solution is the denominational school, pure and simple, 
which is, plainly, no solution at all. A second solution, 
which, however, is but a form of the first one, is the 
"blending" system, once in vogue in England. The 
copies set in the writing books were texts of Scripture, 
and the arithmetical examples were made out of Bible 
facts. For instance: "The children of Israel were sadly 
given to idolatry, notwithstanding all they knew of God. 
Moses was obliged to have 3,000 men put to death for 
this grievous evil. What digits would you use to express 



308 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

this number ?' ' "Of Jacob's four wives, I^eah had six 
sons; Rachel had two; Bilhah had two, and Zilpah had 
also two. How many sons had Jacob ? ' ' These are 
questions from a "Scriptural" arithmetic once used in 
English schools patronized by the Established Church. 
It would be hard to invent any kind of exercise that 
would more effectually defeat reverence for the Bible. 
Another solution is the so-called ' 'comprehensive' ' system 
of England, which permits definite religious instruction 
to be given in school to those, and to those only, who 
wish to receive it. This may work in some countries, 
but it is impossible in the United States. Under the "com- 
bined," or Irish system, the scholars receive secular in- 
struction from the schoolmasters, and separate religious 
teaching from the ministers of religion. This, no doubt, 
is the happiest solution that has ever been reached, pro- 
vided the secular instruction and the religious instruction 
are given in separate places. This is the French way — 
a weekly holiday on which parents who are so disposed 
may send their children to the church or the parsonage to 
be taught religion by the priest or the pastor. 

Thirdly, the public schools and the public-school funds 
must be controlled absolutely and alone by the public. 
That is, the State — the corporate people — acting through 
the government, must control them. In modern society, 
the only agent to which the State could delegate its power 
and its resources is the Church or the churches. No 
other agent asks to receive such a delegation. No other 
could exercise it. Without entering into the question 
of what the State may or may not do in countries having 
established churches, I must declare with emphasis that 
in the United States government cannot enter into any 
educational partnership with any church or churches. 
It is a significant fact that the plan of having the school- 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 309 

board rent, at a nominal rate, the parochial school houses 
from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., and employ and pay the parochial 
teachers, excluding religious instruction between those 
hours but permitting it on either side of them, has never 
found general favor. Nor, we may be certain, will the 
recent recommendation by a high ecclesiastic that the 
English plan of having the State pay for the secular 
education given in denominational schools according to 
results determined by the State's own examinations, be 
received with favor. Both plans are antagonistic to 
American ideas. 

Fourthly, it is the duty of the citizen to give the State 
the same support in discharging its educational function 
that he gives it in other functions. He has the same 
liberty of action here that he has in other spheres of State 
action; he may criticize the State schools and seek to 
improve them; but to antagonize them and obstruct their 
operation is an offense of the same kind as to antagonize 
it in any of its other functions. Such conduct is more 
than unpatriotic. Were Luther living, he would plainly 
call such a man an enemy of the State. 

It is idle to reply that the ancient States did not main- 
tain common schools, and that State education, as we 
know it, is a modern idea. The argument proves too 
much. It would also cut off the post-office, State owner- 
ship or regulation of railroads and telegraph lines, scien- 
tific surveys, State asylums for the blind and deaf, and 
many other things that we count the peculiar glory of our 
civilization. But, further, a State does not, like a fish or 
a tree, perform constant and unvarying functions. The 
conception of the State involves absolute sovereignty; but 
this sovereignty manifests itself in forms that are deter- 
mined by existing civilization. In a word, the State passes 
through successive stages of development. The ancient 



3IO STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

. State did things that the modern State does not do, or at 
least is ceasing to do; the modern State does things that 
the ancient State did not do. The ancient tendency was, 
for example, to unite closely the civil and the religious 
offices of society in one organization; the modern ten- 
dency is to separate them. With few exceptions, ancient 
and medieval States left education to individuals; the 
modern State has assumed the duty of educating its mem- 
bers, and is constantly laying upon it increased emphasis. 
The idea has become deeply rooted in the modern mind 
that the property of the State must educate the children 
of the State; and there is about as much probability that 
the State will yield this function as there is that it will 
abandon its police or postal organization. On this point 
the people have made up their minds; their motto is 
Nulla vestigia retrorsum. It was his profound conviction 
that State education is both inevitable and necessary which 
led Archbishop Ireland to say, in his St. Paul address 
before the National Educational Association in July last: 

The right of the State school to exist, I consider, is a matter 
beyond the stage of discussion. I most fully concede it. To the 
child must be imparted instruction in no mean degree, that the 
man may earn for himself an honest competence, and acquit him- 
self of the duties which society exacts of him for its own pros- 
perity and life. This proposition, true in any country of modern 
times, is peculiarly true in America. The imparting of this 
instruction is primarily the function of the child' s parent. The 
family is prior to the State. The appointment of Providence is 
that, under the care and direction of the parent, the child shall 
grow both in body and in mind. The State intervenes whenever 
the family cannot or will not do the work that is needed. The 
State's place in the function of instruction is loco parentis. As 
things are, tens of thousands of children will not be instructed if 
parents remain solely in charge of the duty. The State must 
come forward as an agent of instruction, else ignorance will pre- 
vail. Indeed, in the absence of State action, there never was that 



EDUCATIONAL FUNCTION OF THE MODERN STATE. 31 1 

universal instruction which we have so nearly attained and which 
we deem necessary. In the absence of State action, I believe uni- 
versal instruction would never, in any country, have been possible. 
State action in favor of instruction implies free schools in 
which knowledge is conditioned in the asking; in no other man- 
ner can we bring instruction within the reach of all children. 
Free schools! Blest indeed is the nation whose vales and hillsides 
they adorn, and blest the generation upon whose souls is poured 
their treasure! No tax is more legitimate than that which is 
levied for the dispelling of mental darkness, and the building up 
within a nation's bosom of intelligent manhood and womanhood. 
The question may not be raised, how much good accrues to the 
individual taxpayer; the general welfare is richly served, and this 
suffices. It is scarcely necessary to add that the money paid in 
school tax is the money of the State, and is to be disbursed solely 
by the officials of the State, and solely for the specific purpose 
for which it was collected. * 

Considering the source whence it emanates, no stronger 
testimony than this to the value and necessity of State 
action in the educational field can be found or desired. 

Once more, we can hardly insist too much that the 
assumption of the educational function by the State was 
necessitated by the change in the character of the 
State. Until recent times, the State consisted practically 
of a small number of persons. The many were an igno- 
rant and voiceless herd. In Athens there were ten slaves 
for every freeman, while in the days of the Antonines 
Rome had 60,000,000 of slaves to an equal number of 
freeman. The republics of medieval times were but 
somewhat open aristocracies. In nothing, perhaps, is the 
modern world more unlike the ancient than in the char- 
acter and composition of the State. 

And this brings us back to the momentous fact with 
which we began — the democratic spirit of modern civi- 

1 Addresses and Proceedings of the National Educational As- 
sociation, 1890, pp. 179, et sea. 



312 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

lization, and particularly of our own century and country. 
It is the enthusiasm of humanity lifting up manhood, 
proclaiming liberty throughout all the land to all the 
inhabitants thereof, assigning to every man a status in 
society, enfranchising the multitude, strengthening the 
weak and curbing the power of the strong, asserting that 
men are members one of another, declaring the right of 
the most darkened mind to light and knowledge, and 
providing educational institutions with a view of making 
instruction coextensive with the State. This spirit has 
attempted great undertakings. Of these, universal edu- 
cation is the greatest and the noblest. As it is Divine in 
spirit and in aim, so it may seem superhuman in diffi- 
culty. But when we consider the momentum that has 
been acquired, the experience that has been accumulated, 
and the vast resources at command, it would be treason 
to doubt that, in the end, the enthusiasm of humanity 
will accomplish the work. 

Note. — The Free Education Act passed the same year that 
this address was delivered, was a long step in the direction of free 
education in England. It justified the prediction made on p. 307. 
At this writing the subject is again before the country in a new 
form. The palmy days of voluntaryism are spent. 




XVI. 

SOME SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR 
EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. 1 

HE President Montesquieu devotes Book IV. of 
' ' The Spirit of Iyaws ' ' to the proposition 
that ' ' the laws of education ought to be rela- 
tive to the principles of government." It is 
evident that by the ' ' laws of education ' ' he means the 
spirit or genius of education, for he proceeds to argue 
that— 

The laws of education are the first impressions we receive; 
and as they prepare us for civil life, each particular family ought 
to be governed pursuant to the plan of the great family which 
comprehends them all. If the people in general have a principle, 
their constituent parts, that is, the several families, will have one 
also. The laws of education will be therefore different in each 
species of government; in monarchies they will have honor for 
their object; in republics, virtue; in despotic governments, fear. 

He contends further that — 

It is in a republican government that the whole power of edu- 
cation is required. The fear of despotic governments rises natur- 
ally of itself amidst threats and punishments; the honor of 
monarchies is favored by the passions, and favors them in turn; 
but virtue is a self-renunciation which is always arduous and 
painful. 

Granting that the existing frame of government in any 
country should continue to stand, Montesquieu's general 
proposition is perfectly true. Not only so, it would be 

*A papei read before the New Jersey State Teachers' Associa- 
tion, Asbury Park, N. J., July, 1894 

313 



314 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

equally true in respect to both the genius and the institu- 
tions of education if it were made to embrace civil society, 
or civilization as a whole. Certainly it can be no less impor- 
tant that education should be relative to the social genius 
of a people than relative to its governmental frame- work. 
Once more, it is quite as evident that a relation will exist 
between education and civil society as that it ought to 
exist between them. It is by no means true that civiliza- 
tions are always homogeneous. Quite the contrary. No 
civilization has been free from incongruities and contra- 
dictions. In England, an hereditary legislative house 
sits side by side with the most august and powerful repre- 
sentative assembly that has ever existed. State churches 
are found in Switzerland, France, and Great Britain, 
although the first two countries are republics, and the 
other a democratized monarchy. No democratic country 
equals Imperial Germany in respect to popular education, 
while Scotland has long surpassed England in that respect 
as much as England has surpassed Scotland in wealth. 
History is full of such anomalies as these. They do not, 
however, disprove the fundamental ideas upon which 
political philosophy rests. They are due to a variety of 
causes. One is that the institutions of civilization are 
never the products of conscious logic or theory, but are 
rather growths more or less guided by theory. Even in 
countries where doctrinaires and idealogues most abound, 
and have most sway, they do not really legislate for the 
future. Then society does not proceed along the several 
lines of movement with equal step; and this inequality, 
again, is due to the peculiar qualities of the national genius 
and character, and to the varying degrees of resistance that 
facts accomplished oppose to the innovating spirit. The 
State churches mentioned are survivals of the period when 
there was in all Christian states only one Church, and all 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 315 

men belonged to it; and it is hard to believe that they can 
permanently breast the waves of modern democracy. It is 
probable that the House of Lords will sometime be either 
ended or mended. The slow progress that elementary 
education had made in England down to 1870 was due 
mainly to the stronghold of the laissez-faire principle on 
the English mind, to the strong aristocratic tone of Eng- 
lish society, and to the indifference or opposition of the 
Established Church, which, from the first, had failed to 
take such a hold of the common mind as the Reformed 
Churches of Scotland and the Continent had taken. But 
even in England where, as the French say, facts predom- 
inate over ideas, social factors tend to coalesce; the year 
which ushered in the first Reform Bill saw the first 
Parliamentary grant for education, while the Reform 
Bill of 1867 was the immediate precursor of the Elemen- 
tary Education Act of 187.0, which again has been fol- 
lowed by the Acts of 1873, 1874, 1876, 1879, 1880, and 
1891. Even the staunchest English conservatives seem 
to have accepted the famous saying uttered by Lord Sher- 
brooke with immediate reference to the Reform Bill of 
1867: " We must educate our masters." 

One conclusion to be drawn from the foregoing consid- 
erations is, that the historical study of education in any 
country should be wide enough to include such factors as 
national character, the time-spirit, political institutions, 
the industrial system, and moral, philosophical, and reli- 
gious ideas. Education is never a single or unrelated 
fact, but is always bound up with a great number of 
other facts. Partly to illustrate this conclusion, and 
partly to accomplish other purposes that will appear in 
the sequel, it is proposed in this paper to point out the 
educational bearings of three or four groups of statistics 
drawn from the Census of 1890. 



316 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

We shall first glance at the series of very interesting 
tables and maps, found in the Bulletins issued by the Cen- 
sus Office, 1 showing the areas of territory that are occu- 
pied by certain maxima and minima of population. Two 
explanatory remarks are, however, called for. One is 
that the Census Office considers those parts of the country 
which have a population of less than 2 to the square mile 
as unsettled. These parts amount to something more than 
a third of the whole, including Alaska. The precise ratio 
is 1,077,594 to 3,024,880 sq. miles. The other is that 
urban population is not considered in preparing these 
tables and maps. The moment that any center of popu- 
lation is discovered to contain an aggregate of 8,000 peo- 
ple, it is called a city, and is at once withdrawn from the 
computation. Thus, 51.58 per cent of the population of 
the North Atlantic States was excluded altogether; or, 
69.90 per cent of Massachusetts, 78.89 per cent of Rhode 
Island, and 59.50 per cent of New York. As a rule, 
the county has been made the unit for these computa- 
tions. The total population of a county (less the city pop- 
ulation as explained above) is made the dividend, its area 
in square miles the divisor, and the quotient is accepted 

1 The Bulletins used are the following: No. 16 {Population 
of the United States by States and Territories, 1890); No. 52 (Urban 
Population in 1890); No. 48 (The White and Colored Popu- 
lation in the United States in 1890); No. 165 (Population of Places 
having 1,000 inhabitants or more in 1896); No. 194 (Population 
by Color, Sex, and General Nativity, 1890); No. 379 ( Wealth of 
the United States, 1890). Extra Census Bulletins: No. 1 (In-' 
crease and Decrease of Population, 1880, 1890); No. 2 (Distribu- 
tion of Population according to Density, 1890). The areas of 
States are given on the authority of The Continental Atlas, Phila- 
delphia, 1894. The statistics of illiteracy come from the Abstract 
of the Eleventh Census, 1890, while the educational statistics 
proper are taken generally from the Report of the Commissioner 
of Education, 1890-91. 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 317 

as the average density of settlement. But when the 
county is of unusual size, as, for example, in the Cor- 
dilleran region, or where there is reason to think the 
different parts of the county differ decidedly in density of 
population, it is not treated as a whole, but an approxima- 
tion to the distribution of the population within it is 
obtained by the use of the town or township as the unit 
of computation, or by other less exact means in case this 
is not practicable. 1 

The following table shows the areas falling within the 
maxima and minijna of population designated: 

Population 2 to 6 to a square mile 592,037 square miles. 

6 to 18 " '■ " 394,943 " 

18 to 45 " « " 701,847 " 

45 to 90 " ' " 235,148 " 

90 and above 24,312 " 

Total, 1,947,287 

The several groups bear to one another the ratios of 
304, 202, 361, 121, and 12. That is, 304 parts out of 
1,000 parts, had a population of from 2 to 6 to a square 
mile, etc. 

These statistics have a manifest economical signifi- 
cance or value, as the Superintendent of the Census thus 
explains: 

These limits define in a general way the extent and prevalence 
of various classes of industries. The first group, 2 to 6 to a square 
mile, indicates a population mainly occupied with the grazing 
industry, or a widely scattered farming population. The second 
group, 6 to 18, indicates a farming population, with systematic 
cultivation of the soil, but this either in an early stage of settle- 
ment or upon more or less rugged soil. The third group, 18 to 45 
to a square mile, almost universally indicates a highly successful 
agriculture, while in some localities the beginnings of manufac- 
tures have raised into this group a difficult farming region. Speak- 

1 Extra Census Bulletin No. 2. 



318 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ing generally, agriculture in this country is not carried on with 
such care and refinement as yet to afford employment and sup- 
port to a population in excess of 45 to a square mile; conse- 
quently, the last two groups, 45 to 90 and 90 and above to a square 
mile, appear only as commerce and manufactures arise and per- 
sonal and professional services are in demand. 

While territory is constantly passing from lower to 
higher groups, owing to increase of population, the 
lower groups, save in a single decade, have constantly 
increased, owing to the enlargement of the area of settle- 
ment. Still, on the whole, population has increased 
twice as fast as the extent of territory settled. From 1790 
to 1890 the one rate was 16-fold, the other 8-fold. In 
1790 the area of the lowest group was 348 parts and the 
highest 3 parts, in 1,111; in 1840 the same ratios were 
228 and 7; and in 1890, 304 and 12. In a century the 
area included in group one increased approximately 7- 
fold; group two, 5-fold; group three, 12-fold; group 
four, 18-fold; group five, 30 -fold. And yet the highest 
stands now where it stood in 1860, and is lower than in 
1870 and in 1880, owing to the rapid passage of urban 
population into cities in the most thickly inhabited 
parts of the country. Such, at least, is the explanation 
put forth by the Superintendent of the Census, and it 
would no doubt be confirmed by an examination of the 
facts. 

The important bearings of these statistics on the prob- 
lem of popular education must quickly become apparent to 
every mind. Common schools are for the people, and 
they are dependent upon a certain density of population, 
as well as upon other material factors- In populous 
districts fewer schools are called for, relatively, while the 
system can be more fully developed, owing to the larger 
numbers and more varied attainments of the children who 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 319 

are to be taught. The school must be within a certain 
distance from the home, or the child will attend it with 
difficulty or not at all. And finally, the interest and 
enthusiasm of the school depend in a degree upon the 
number and the range of ability of the scholars present; 
teachers receive something from the children, as well as 
give something to them; whence it follows, as a rule, that 
you can no more make a good school with a handful of 
scholars than you can make a good fire with two fagots of 
wood or two bits of coal. It is therefore with excellent 
reason that a competent writer on popular education in 
France finds much significance in the facts that he thus 
states: " Everywhere the population now tends to group 
itself into the cities and large villages. In France the low 
rate of increase in the population complicates this situation. 
The rural districts are depopulated, and there is difficulty 
in finding laborers to till the .soil." 1 Experience has 
proved that a blizzard is an educational factor that has to 
be dealt with in the Dakotas. 

How dense the population of an American State must 
be in order to create the conditions essential to the exist- 
ence of an efficient school system, is a question that, if 
conducted with reference to ascertained facts, could not 
fail to interest every student of American society. The 
practical question would be, "What population to a 
square mile has experience shown to be necessary to the 
existence of such a system ?" Obviously, a population of 
from 2 to 6 is inadequate for the purpose. But can such 
a system be fairly expected to exist where the population 
ranges from 6 to 18 to the square mile, or must we wait 
until we strike the higher grade of from 18 to 45 to a 
square mile ? To be sure, this is not the only factor that 
enters into school supply and popular education. Density 

1 Parsons: French Schools Through American Eyes, p. 20. 



320 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

of population, wealth, and educational interest do not 
stand in a constant ratio to one another. Besides, the 
interval between the density of the most thinly populated 
districts and the density of the most thickly populated is 
to be considered; also the relative sizes and geographical 
relations of these districts. Furthermore, the question 
whether schools shall be made practically a township or 
district charge, or whether large appropriations for their 
support shall be made from the State treasury, is an 
important one. For example, in Massachusetts school 
provision is almost wholly a town matter; while Pennsyl- 
vania distributes from the State treasury among the 
common schools $5,000,000 a year, and Ohio and Michi- 
gan the proceeds of a State tax of one mill on the dollar 
of the grand tax duplicate of the State. But here again 
the wealth of the State and its distribution become im- 
portant factors; the towns of Massachusetts are better 
able to provide for themselves than the townships of 
Michigan would be. Still another factor is school funds 
or endowments; but as these resources, for the most part, 
are at first in the form of wild lands, they do not become 
available more rapidly than the State fills up with popula- 
tion. When all is said, the material factors of popular 
education, of which density of population is an important 
one, are so potent that educational zeal equal to that of 
the Scotch, backed by all their force of character, cannot 
fully surmount them. 

Such an investigation as I have suggested is foreign to 
the present purpose; and I must content myself with 
remarking that sparseness of population alone will long 
compel rudimentary school systems in large settled regions 
of the United States, at least as measured by the best 
foreign and domestic standards. Such schools as those 
of Saxony or of Massachusetts can be looked for only 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 32 1 

in communities that at least approach them in density 
of population. Already the declension of population 
in many parts of the country has come to be a serious 
factor in the common-school problem. From 1870 to 1880 
only 138 counties fell off in the number of inhabitants; 
but in the ensuing decade, 455 fell off, about 50 of them, 
however, because they were reduced in size. The losses 
occurred in the central parts of Maine, New Hampshire, 
Vermont, and New York, Northern New Jersey, and 
Eastern Virginia, and were scattered quite generally 
through Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Texas, and Kentucky. 
Southern Michigan and Wisconsin have also suffered, 
while in Eastern Iowa a large proportion of the counties 
have lost population. It is not in education alone, let it be 
remarked, that these losses signify a declension of civiliz- 
ing force; they are of much significance also in respect to 
religion and church life and the whole social economy. 
Still there is some encouragement in the fact that the 
tables of succeeding censuses sometimes show a recovery, 
owing to the introduction of new industrial conditions, as 
the establishment of commerce and manufactures in the 
room of exclusive agricultural employments. 

One factor may be referred to that cannot be considered 
at length. This is means of communication. The number, 
the convenience, and the kind of roads existing in any 
region of country appreciably effect its school attendance. 
The same may be said of railroads, horse cars, and electric 
cars. The bicycle even has come to play its part. The 
more abundant, the better, and the cheaper the means of 
communication, ceteris paribus, the farther apart school 
houses can be placed, and the more remote from the homes 
of the children, thus securing concentration of attendance 
with its accompanying benefits. There is reason to think 
that many States will commit themselves to the plan of 



322 



STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 



reducing the number of schools in their more populous 
parts, placing them at the most eligible points, and then 
carrying the children, or at least such of them as stand in 
need of being carried, to and from the school at the public 
expense. There can be little question that in this way 
the schools could be improved and money at the same time 
be saved. This has apparently been shown by the trial 
of the plan in Massachusetts. There can be little doubt 
that means of communication will play an increasing part 
in popular education in the future. 

To make the argument more definite, we may compare 
the two oldest sections of the Union in respect to density 
of population. The nine North Atlantic States contain 
168,655 square miles of territory, which is thus dis- 
tributed in respect to population: 

Population 2 to 6 to the square mile 11,759 square miles. 

6 to 18 " " " 10,000 

18 to 45 " " " 45,733 

45 to 90 " " " 69,267 

90 and above " " 19,824 

Total settled area, 156,682; unsettled, 11,973. 

The South Atlantic States contain a total area of 282,- 
555 square miles, which is thus distributed: 

Population 2 to 6 to a square mile 19,854 square miles. 

6 to 18 " " " 55,675 " 

18to45 " " " 143,962 " 

45 to 90 " " " 35,152 " 

90 and above " " 902 

Total settled area, 255,455; unsettled, 27,100. 

If we hold that a population of less than 18 to a square 
mile, or 648 to a Congressional township, does not, as a 
rule, furnish a suitable basis for a good school system, 
then in the one group of States we should throw out a little 
more than one- eighth of the settled area, while in the 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 323 

other we should throw out nearly one-third. Or, to put 
the facts in another way, while the North Atlantic States 
have about six-elevenths of the settled area of the South 
Atlantic States, and double the population, they contain 
more than twenty times the area having a population of 90 
and over to the square mile, and double the area falling into 
the group of from 45 to 90. In the group 18 to 45 to the 
square mile, the ratio is about 4 to 1 in favor of the South. 
The contrast would be even more striking if we were to 
present the statistics for the several States separately. 
For example, Massachusetts has no territory that falls into 
either the first or second group, while the areas that fall 
into the third, fourth, and fifth groups respectively are 
959, 4,149, 3,932 square miles. Virginia, on the other 
hand, has no territory that falls into either the first 
or the fifth group, while the figures for the second, 
third, and fourth groups are 3,109, 29,895, and 7,122 
square miles respectively. Moreover, this is taking 
no account of cities, which cut a great figure as we shall 
soon see. 

The average population of the North Atlantic States 
to the square mile was as follows: Maine, 20; New Hamp- 
shire, 40.4; Vermont, 34.4; Massachusetts, 269.2; Rhode 
Island, 276.4; Connecticut, 149.5; New York, 121.9; New 
Jersey, 184.8; Pennsylvania, 116.2. The New England 
States together reached the high average of 70.7; New 
York, Pennsylvania, and New Jersey, together, the still 
higher average of 124.2 to the square mile. 

The South Atlantic States presented the following 
averages: Delaware, 82.1; Maryland, 85.3; District of 
Columbia, 3,291.3; Virginia, 39; West Virginia, 30.7; 
North Carolina, 30.9; South Carolina, 37.6; Georgia, 
30.9* Florida, 6.6. The aveiage population of these 
States was 31.3 to the square mile. 



324 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

But we must approach this aspect of the subject more 
closely. In 1890 the United States, not including Alaska, 
contained 3,024,880 square miles of territory; 62,622,250 
people, and 443 cities of 8,000 inhabitants or more each. 
Of the total population, 18,235,670 dwelt in the 443 
cities, or 29.12 per cent of the whole. Related as these 
elements are, they nevertheless present no constant ratios. 
Population is distributed with little regard to area, 
cities with little regard to either area or population, and 
urban population with little regard to any of the other 
factors. The North Atlantic States contained one- 
eighteenth of the area, three-elevenths of the population, 
three-sevenths of the cities, and nearly one-half of 
the urban population. The South Atlantic States, in- 
cluding the District of Columbia, contained one-eleventh 
of the square miles, one-seventh of the people, one-thir- 
teenth of the cities, and about the same proportion of the 
urban population. However, if the cities of Baltimore 
and Washington, with a total population of 565,831, were 
withdrawn, the ratio of urban population at the South to 
the whole population would be very materially diminished. 
Probably more people live in Philadelphia to-day than in 
all the cities of the South Atlantic States, Washington 
excluded. Were we to carry the inquiry further, we 
should encounter some striking contrasts. For example, 
New Jersey, with an area of 7,815 square miles, and a 
population of 1,443,943, had 20 cities with 780,978 inhab- 
itants, while Mississippi, with an area of 46,810 square 
miles and a population of 1,289,600, had only three cities 
with a total population of only 34,098 ! 

These statistics present to our study a new factor in 
popular education, viz.: the city. What was before said 
relative to the number of children that can be collected in 
the same school houses, and the distance of the school 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 325 

houses one from another and from the homes of the chil- 
dren, applies to the city with more than double force. 
Here it is that the conditions of numbers and attendance, 
in connection with other factors, have partly permitted 
and partly compelled the great improvements that have 
been made in popular education in the last generation, 
and that it has been found, in some cases impossible, and 
in all cases difficult, to introduce into the rural districts, 
viz. , new methods of teaching and control, better organiza- 
tion, classification, and supervision, fuller development 
both in the elementary grades and in the high school, as 
well as the city training school, industrial education, 
manual training, household economy, the kindergarten, 
and evening schools. These remarks will perhaps suf- 
ficiently illuminate the following statistics: — 

In 1890 the North Atlantic States together had an 
urban population of 51.58 per cent, of their whole popu- 
lation, viz.: Maine 19.72, New Hampshire 27.37, Ver- 
mont 7.93, Massachusetts 69.90, Rhode Island 78.89, 
Connecticut 50.58, New York 59.50, New Jersey 54.05, 
Pennsylvania 40.73 per cent. 

The South Atlantic States had an urban population of 
16.04 per cent, of their whole number, viz. : Delaware 
36.46, Maryland 44.65, District of Columbia 100, Virginia 
13.40, West Virginia 7.02, North Carolina 3.87, South 
Carolina 6.86, Georgia 10.84, Florida 12.02 percent. 

Unfortunately, in large portions of the Union popular 
education is still further complicated by the race question. 
In 1890 the white population of the country was 54,983,- 
890, or 87.80 per cent, of whole; the colored population, 
including negroes, Chinese, . Japanese, and civilized 
Indians, 7,638,360, or 12.20 percent, of the whole. For 
our purpose we may say that one-eighth of the whole 



326 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

population were negroes. Once more, the colored popu- 
lation was very unequally distributed. The percents of 
white and colored respectively were as follows: 

North Atlantic States 98.4 1.6 

South Atlantic States 63.2 36.8 

North Central States 98. 2. 

South Central States 68.3 31.7 

Western Division 94.8 5.2 

These statistics become still more significant when we 
analyze the several groups. In the North Atlantic States 
the smallest per cent, of colored population was in New 
Hampshire, 0.18; the largest in New Jersey, 3.35; in the 
South Atlantic States the smallest per cent, was in Dela- 
ware, 16.87 (excluding West Virginia, which might more 
properly be considered as belonging to the South Central 
group), the largest in South Carolina, 59.87. 

The educational significance of these statistics is ap- 
preciated by all students of education who have a socio- 
logical turn; but it is not appreciated by the public at 
large, certainly not by the people of the North, and prob- 
ably not by the people of the South. North of Mason 
and Dixon's line the race question is hardly an appreci- 
able factor in current educational history. The per cent, 
of colored children is so small that it is practically lost 
sight of in the mass. The white and the colored children, 
where colored ones are found, commonly attend the same 
school; and so it has been in many cases from the 
establishment of the public school systems. Some of these 
States once had laws authorizing school authorities to 
provide separate schools for colored children, but the 
last of these, it is believed, have disappeared from the 
statute book. But at the South the case is far different. 
Provisions similar to Section 207 of the present Constitu- 
tion of Mississippi, adopted in 1890, are found in many 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 327 

of the Southern State Constitutions, viz. : ' 'Separate 
schools shall be maintained for children of the white and 
colored races' ' ; and in the States where the Constitution 
is silent on this point, the law speaks no less decisively. 
Hence it is that, save executive machinery, there are in 
every one of these States two systems of public schools, 
more or less developed, one for white and one for colored 
children. For the present, this state of things is inevit- 
able, and no doubt it will long remain inevitable. To put 
it in the mildest form, social conditions impose it upon 
the South. Now at what cost, both of efficiency and of 
money, public education must be maintained in these 
States, words are hardly necessary to tell. In large cities, 
where the youth of either race are counted by the thou- 
sand, a fair grade of education may possibly be kept up 
in both classes of schools; but in the small cities and 
villages, and still more in the rural districts, this will be 
found difficult. Other things being equal, a homogeneous 
population is favorable to the support of good schools. 
Accordingly, the small percentage of colored population 
in such States as New Hampshire and Maine, and the 
large percentage in South Carolina and Georgia, cannot be 
overlooked in the study of educational conditions in those 
States. The presence of a large colored population affects 
education unfavorably in several ways: it reduces materi- 
ally the per capita wealth that is available for educational 
and other public purposes; it increases the cost of efficient 
education, by making necessary two systems of schools; 
it lowers the general level of intellectual and moral life. 
Some of the Southern States have put in their Consti- 
tutions provisions like the following, quoted from the 
Constitution of Kentucky (adopted in 1891), Section 194: 
"In distributing the school fund no distinction shall be 
made on account of race or color." This is coupled, how- 



328 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ever, with the further provision, "and separate schools 
for white and colored children shall be maintained;" and 
some of the States, and perhaps all of them, have made 
like provisions in their laws. We need not question the 
sincerity of these declarations; but if, under all the cir- 
cumstances, the colored race does not suffer in the com- 
petition it will be the first time in history that the strong, 
on so extensive a scale, have put the weak on an equality 
with themselves. We have not yet discovered how far- 
reaching were De Tocqueville's remarks about slavery, 
made in 1830. After observing .that in antiquity the 
master and the slave belonged to the same race, that 
freedom was the only difference between them, and that, 
as soon as the slave was emancipated, the prejudice that 
his previous servile condition had created tended at once 
to disappear, he proceeded to point out how different it is 
in modern times. 

The greatest difficulty in antiquity was that of altering the law; 
amongst the moderns it is that of altering the manners; and, as 
far as we are concerned, the real obstacles begin where those of 
the ancients left off. This arises from the circumstance that, 
amongst the moderns, the abstract and transient fact of slavery is 
fatally united with the physical and permanent fact of color The 
condition dishonors the race, and the peculiarity of the race per- 
petuates the tradition of slavery. The modern slave differs from 

his master not only in his condition, but in his origin 

The moderns, then, after they have abolished slavery, have three 
prejudices to contend against, which are less easy to attack and 
far less easy to conquer, than the mere fact of servitude — the pre- 
judice of the master, the prejudice of the race, and the prejudice of 
color. 1 

We come now to another factor. The census-takers of 
1890 reported the true valuation of property in the United 

1 Democracy in America. Translated by Henry Reeve, Chap. 
XVIII. 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 329 

States at $65,037,000,000. Census Bulletin No. 379 
presents many facts of interest relating to this subject, 
some of which are not a little surprising. The following 
table shows the distribution of this wealth by groups of 
States; also the average per capita of the population. 

TOTAL. PER CAPITA. 

North Atlantic States $21,435,491,000 $1,132 

South Atlantic Division 5,132,980,000 579 

North Central States 25,255,915,000 1,129 

South Central States 6,401,281,000 583 

Western States 6,811,422,000 2,250 

The average for the whole country was $1,039 per 
capita. The surprising average of the Western Division 
is explained by the smallness of the population of those 
States, and the vast aggregate of real property, very 
much of which is unproductive. But let us return to the 
two groups of States that have furnished our principal 
comparisons throughout. 

These are the averages of wealth of the North Atlantic 
States: Maine $740; New Hampshire $863; Vermont $799; 
Massachusetts $1,252; Rhode Island $1,459; Connecticut 
81,119; New York $1,430; New Jersey $1,000; Pennsyl- 
vania $1,170. 

And these of the South Atlantic States: Delaware 
$1,043; Maryland $1,041; District of Columbia $1,491; 
Virginia $521; West Virginia $575; North Carolina $361; 
South Carolina $348; Georgia $464; Florida $995. 

The maximum at the North is found in Rhode Island, 
$1,459 per capita; the minimum in Maine, $7 '40 per capita. 
The maximum at the south (excluding the District of 
Columbia) is found in Delaware, $1,043; the minimum 
in South Carolina, $348. Only three of the. Northern 
States fall below an average of $1,000; only two of the 
Southern States reach that average. 



330 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

No one who is familiar with the enormous cost of a 
liberal and efficient system of State education at the pres- 
ent time, can fail to see at a glance the educational bearings 
of these statistics. The amount of money that the States 
together now expend upon common schools annually is 
fully equal to twice the largest expenditure of the National 
Government for all purposes in any single year previous 
to the Civil War; 1 and if the standard set by some of the 
States were maintained throughout, this sum would be 
very greatly increased. It will be found instructive care- 
fully to compare the following table, showing the total 
expenditure for common schools by divisions of States, 
in 1890, the expenditure per capita, and the average per 
pupil with the table given above showing the aggregate 
wealth of the divisions, and the wealth per capita. 

TOTAI,. PER PUPII,. PER CAPITA. 

North Atlantic States $48,006,369 $2.76 $23.65 

South Atlantic States 8,519,873 .96 8.25 

South Central States 10,796,864 .98 7.59 

North Central States 62,823,563 2.81 19.96 

Western States 10,130,815 3 35 34 03 

The high averages of the Western States are explained 
by the sparseness of the population and the high salaries 
paid to teachers. Thus in Ohio, the average expenditure 
for school purposes is $2.93 and the average expenditure 
for tuition is $1.60 per capita of the population while in 
California the same items are $4.29 and $3. Or, to put 
in another form, Ohio tuition is $12.70 per pupil annually; 
California tuition $24.98. 

A careful inquiry into the cost of public education in 
cities could not fail to be instructive and interesting. It 
has already been remarked that density of population 
favors combination and organization, and so conduces to 

1 Commissioner Harris reports the total common school expen- 
diture for the year 1890-91 at $146,800,000. See Report, p. 2. 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 33 1 

economy of expenditure. This is on the supposition, how- 
ever, that the range and scale of education remain the 
same in such populations. But this is not the case. The 
city demands a longer school year, and a more fully 
differentiated system. What this means in money-cost, 
could be very easily shown. The District of Columbia, 
which is the City of Washington, expends 13. 92 per capita 
of her population for schools, or an average of $32.14 
per pupil; both of which sums exceed the similar items 
presented by any of the States, save those found in the 
Western group. The cost of public education, measured 
both by the population and by the school attendance of 
large cities, will commonly, or always, be found higher, 
and sometimes much higher, than that of the States in 
which the cities are found. 

Now, it would be quite too much to say that the cost of 
education always measures its value, or that the expendi- 
tures which the States make for schools always vary 
directly with the average wealth, or in the same ratio. 
Educational ideals and traditions assert themselves, not to 
speak of other material factors. Rhode Island is a 
richer community than Massachusetts, Connecticut, or 
New York, but she falls behind those States in her per 
capita expenditure for schools. Virginia is but little 
behind West Virginia in average wealth, but she is far 
behind in popular education. The educational expendi- 
tures of North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia arc 
not commensurate with their educational resources. At 
the same time, a general correspondence is observable. At 
the North, Massachusetts, which is second only to Rhode 
Island and New York in average wealth, leads the other 
States in relative school expenditures; while Maine, the 
poorest of these States, stands at the foot of the list. At 
the South, Maryland spends more money per capita for 



332 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

education than any other State, and she is also richer 
than any other; South Carolina spends least of all and 
she is the poorest of all. We may conclude, therefore, 
that between wealth and schools a relation exists similar 
to that between population and schools. If such schools as 
those of Saxony and Massachusetts cannot be looked for in 
thinly populated States, neither can they be in poor States. 
Furthermore the ratio of taxpayers, or of adult males, 
to the number of children to be schooled, is an important 
matter. Taking the country as a whole, there are 91 fa 
tax-payers for each 100 children 5 to 18 years of age; but 
in different sections the ratio varies from 65 t 9 q to 100, in 
the South Central States, to 156^ to 100 in the Western 
States. In South Carolina there are but 55 adult males 
to earn the money with which to school 100 children, and 
33 of these are colored men. Combining the taxpayer 
factor and the per capita tax, some very striking results 
are obtained. Dr. Harris informs us that in Montana a 
contribution of $5.85 per taxpayer furnishes $16.02 for 
each child of school age, while in Texas a contribution 
of $6.55 per taxpayer produces a result of only $4.48 
for each child. Mississippi, after raising, per taxpayer, 
about half what Nevada raises, has only about one-eighth 
as much as the latter State for each child of school age. 1 
The causes that affect the ratio of school children to the 
adult male population are beside the present inquiry. It 
is obvious, however, that this is an educational factor of 
much importance. 2 

1 Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1 890-1891, p. 24. 

2 Considered in the light of the facts and views now presented, 
certain provisions in some of the State school laws become ex- 
tremely significant. For example, the laws of Alabama provided 
a few years ago: "When only one public school is established in a 
township, it must be so located as to accommodate the largest 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 333 

The view would be incomplete, even within the scope 
of the present limits, unless something were said of the 
portentous subject of illiteracy. The following table 
shows the per cents of illiterate persons, ten years of age 
and over, white, colored, and total, in the several groups 
of States and in the whole country. The base of the 
several computations is the total number of such persons, 
ten years of age and upwards, in the several groups of 
the States and in the United States. 

WHITE). COLORED. TOTAI,. 

North Atlantic 5.9 24.2 6.2 

South Atlantic 19.5 75.1 40.3 

North Central 5.9 41.2 6.7 

South Central ..21.6 76. 39.5 

Western 8.8 33.2 11.3 

UnitedStates 9.4 70. 17. 

number of pupils; but the location may be changed from year to 
year so as to accommodate those children who were not within 
reach of the school in previous years. Preference should be given 
to localities having a schoolhouse already built or a site procured. 
If more than one school for each race be needed in a township, 
more may be established by the local school officer. Preference 
in locating schools should be given to the communities which will 
supplement the district revenue, with the object of sustaining free 
schools for so long a session as possible. No more than two 
schools for either race can be opened in any township wherein the 
school revenue for said race does not exceed $50. The school 
revenue of each township is apportioned as nearly as practicable 
per capita of the probable school attendance. Children may be 
transferred to schools in other than their own school districts, 
but they carry their share of the school revenue with them; and 
if, after deliberation, it is determined not to have one public 
school for each race opened in a township, and the children of the 
race, so left without a school, cannot be transferred readily to 
another school district, their share of the school revenue shall be 
paid to the parents or guardians of said children; provided said 
children attend some other school the same length of time. — 
Report of the Commissioner of Education, 1885-86, p. 24. 



334 



STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 



THE NORTH ATLANTIC STATES. 

STATES. WHITE- COLORED. TOTAE- 

Maine 5.4 31.8 5.5 

New Hampshire 6.8 23.3 6.8 

Vermont 6.7 21.3 6.7 

Massachusetts 6.1 15.4 6.2 

Rhode Island 9.6 18.5 8.8 

Connecticut 5.1 15.8 5.3 

New York 5.4 18.4 . 5.5 

New Jersey 5.7 24.4 6.5 

Pennsylvania 6.4 22.2 6.8 



SOUTH ATLANTIC STATES. 

STATE. WHITE. COEORED. TOTAE. 

Delaware 7.4 49.5 14.3 

Maryland 7. 50.1 15.7 

District of Columbia 2.7 35. 13.2 

Virginia 13.9 57.2 30.2 

West Virginia 13. 44.4 14.4 

North Carolina 23. 60.1 35.7 

South Carolina 17.9 64.1 45. 

Georgia ....16.3 69.3 39.8 

Florida 11.3 50.6 27.8 



The District of Columbia presents the lowest rate of 
white illiteracy found in the table given by the census 
authorities. Of the States, the minimum per cent of 
illiterates of the total population ten years of age and 
upwards is found in Nebraska, 3.1; the maximum in 
Louisiana, 45.8. 

A series of charts that should adequately represent the 
principal groups of social factors entering into popular edu- 
cation in the United States would be very striking. For 
example, the following, among other results, would ap- 
pear: 



SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 335 

I. Density of population per square mile of area. 
North Atlantic States, 103.2. 
South Atlantic States, 31.3. 

II. Per cent, of urban population. 

North Atlantic States, 51.58. 
South Atlantic States, 16.04. 

III. Per cent, of white population. 

North Atlantic States, 98.4. 
South Atlantic States, 63.2. 

IV. Wealth per capita. 

North Atlantic States, $1,132. 
South Atlantic States, 8579. 

V. Amount of money raised for schools per tax payer. 
North Atlantic States, $9.73. 
South Atlantic States, $4.48. 

VI. Amount raised for each child of the school population. 
North Atlantic States, $11.13. 
South Atlantic States, $3 00. 

VII. Number of adult males to each 100 children, 5 to 18 years 
of age. 

North Atlantic States, 114.4. 
South Atlantic States, 66.8. 

VIII. School expenditure j££T capita of the whole population. 
North Atlantic States. $2 76. 
South Atlantic States, $0.96. 

IX. School expenditure per pupil. 

North Atlantic States, $23.65. 
South Atlantic States, $8.25. 

X. Per cent, school population was of the total population. 
North Atlantic States, 25.39. 
South Atlantic States, 34.04. 

XL Number of children enrolled for every 100 children 5 to 18 
years of age. 

North Atlantic States, 70. 
South Atlantic States, 59.47. 



336 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

XII. Average number of pupils attending daily for every 100 
enrolled during the year. 
North Atlantic States, 66. 
South Atlantic States, 62. 

XIII. Average school term in days. 

North Atlantic States, 168. 
South Atlantic States, 99.6. 

XIV. Illiteracy per cent, of the total number of persons of the 

several descriptions, ten years of age and upwards, who 
are illiterate. 

WHITE. COLORED. TOTAI,. 

North Atlantic States 5.9 24.2 6.2 

South Atlantic States 19.5 75.1 40.3 

The statistics that have been presented, which are but 
a few of the many that are available for the purpose, are 
capable of being combined in many interesting ways. 
They also suggest many valuable reflections, of which a 
few will be set down in order. 

1. It is very observable that the several social factors 
enumerated tend strongly to vary directly one with an- 
other, thus furnishing a striking illustration of the unity 
and coherence of society. The statistics also show that 
efforts which are apparently remote from popular educa- 
tion really affect it very decisively. 

2. It is manifest that popular education in the United 
States as a whole must, for a time, be carried on under 
unfavorable conditions. Our vast territory, our sparse- 
ness of population in large sections of the Union, the 
physical conditions that will apparently long prevent dens- 
ity of population, and a diversity of races, to say noth- 
ing of economical, social, and educational ideals and 
traditions, must all work to that end. 

3. It is quite absurd to compare such a country as ours 
in respect to education with the States of Germany, say 



. SOCIAL FACTORS IN POPULAR EDUCATION. 337 

Saxony or Prussia, where the conditions are so widely 
different. In the German States illiteracy has been 
practically annihilated; but in our country it must long 
remain a serious factor in our civilization. Massachusetts 
might be fairly compared with Saxony, or the United 
States with Western Europe as a whole. 

4. In the future, one cause that has greatly retarded 
popular education, will become relatively less and less 
prominent. From 1880 to 1890 the white population 
increased 24.67 per cent.; the colored population 13.90 
per cent. What is more, it is becoming apparent that the 
race question will not prove a disturbing influence beyond 
the present geographical limits, and that within these lim- 
its it will tend toward a minimum. 

5. It must not be supposed that the logic of this paper 
dooms our country, or any large part of it that shall be- 
come permanently settled, to ignorance. Great as are the 
obstacles that confront us, they are not insurmountable. 
Even as it is, marked progress has been made in twenty- 
five years. The National Commissioner well says that, 
taking all the facts into the account, it cannot but be a 
matter of satisfaction that public education has made such 
progress in the South since the war as has actually been 
the case. Still it is perfectly obvious that many of our 
States cannot reach and maintain a high level of popular 
education without great efforts and sacrifices. It is no ex- 
aggeration to say that this end cannot be secured without 
a scale of expenditures which, measured by the existing 
wealth and wealth-producing population, would exceed 
anything now seen in this country, or probably in the 
world. 

6. The last observation is that education, under its prac- 
tical aspects, cannot be discussed as a question by itself. 
Legislatures, boards of education, school administrators, 



338 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

and all organs of educational opinion should take 
education in connection with the whole social and in- 
tellectual environment, — population, wealth, commerce, 
industry, the genius and traditions of the people, and 
philosophical, religious, and moral ideas. The funda- 
mental idea in an educational system must be the provision 
of elementary education for the State or locality; but this 
idea does not exclude special adaptations to particular 
conditions. The manufactures and trade of New Jersey, 
the wheat culture of the Dakotas, the mines of Colorado, 
all become educational factors. Some recognition is 
extended to these factors now; and as society becomes 
more complex, particularly as industry and trade become 
more diversified, this recognition will no doubt become 
still greater 



XVII. 

TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS 
IN ROME. 




HE church of S. Clemente, standing on the via 
di S. Giovanni in L,aterano, which leads from 
the Colosseum to S. John I^ateran, is no unfit 
type of the city of which it is such an interest- 
ing feature. Entering the church by a side door upon 
the street, and passing on through nave, aisles, and 
chapel (in which last are found interesting frescoes by 
Masaccio) , you descend a wide marble stair to a second 
church -beneath the present one. This old church — so 
runs the tradition — was built in the time of Constantine 
the Great, on a spot of peculiar interest to the ecclesias- 
tical mind. It was ruined — so the tradition runs again — 
in 1084, when Robert Guiscard, coming to the rescue of 
Pope Gregory VII., burned the public buildings from the 
Capitol to the Lateran. But so sacred a spot could not 
be left waste and vacant: a new church, less imposing 
and of smaller dimensions than the first one, was built 
before the close of the century, or at least a pope appears 
to have been elected within its walls in 1099. The 
builders of the new structure did not take the pains to 
clear away the remains of the old one; they rather did 
what Roman builders have so often done at other times 
and places — they filled in the walls with such material 
as came to hand, and leveled the surface for the new 
foundations, which were thus raised many feet above 



340 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

the old ones. In this way, the church of the Imperial 
period was buried up out of sight, and in time it was 
forgotten. Such was the state of facts until 1857, 
when the prior, Father Mullooly, of the Irish Domin- 
icans, who own the church, in directing some repairs 
on the upper structure, discovered the old structure. 
Excavations now laid bare before the astonished gaze of 
men extensive portions of the earlier church: a nave, two 
aisles formed by a row of ancient columns made of differ- 
ent marbles, old fragments of art, a small statue of the 
Good Shepherd, pieces of sarcophagi, and numerous 
paintings, frescoes, and inscriptions. The needed sup- 
ports for the upper church were introduced, and the 
lower one rehabilitated, and now, three times a year, the 
old Church is illuminated and thrown open to the world; 
at other times, the visitor to S. Clemente can see it on 
payment of half a franc. It is a sight perhaps unique in 
architecture — two churches, both of which may be used 
for worship at the same time, standing to each other in a 
relation similar to that of the stories of a single house. 
But this is not all. One of the lower passage-ways was 
found to run to a buried shrine of Mithras, the Persian 
sun-god, whose mysteries were introduced into Rome by 
the soldiers of Pompey the Great. But more than this, 
beneath the old basilica there was discovered, in 1867, 
a still earlier structure, which is supposed to be the house 
of S. Clement, in which he is said to have built an oratory 
at a time when it was yet dangerous for a man of prom- 
inence at Rome to be a Christian. This house and spot 
Christian tradition has identified, rightly or wrongly, 
with the fellow-laborer of St. Paul (Phil, iv: 3), and the 
third Bishop of Rome. We may therefore say that there 
are here three Christian temples or houses of worship, the 
second built above the first, and the third above the 



TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME. 341 

second, belonging to widely different periods in the history 
of the Church — the Primitive Age, the Imperial Age, and 
Medieval and Modern Times — the whole series furnishing 
a good symbol of the great city itself. We habitually say 
Rome, but we might say Romes, for really there are many 
of them. Rome is not so much one city as several cities, 
superimposed the one upon the other. True of all old 
cities to a degree, this is peculiarly true of the City of the 
Tiber. Despite the ruin that time has wrought, you can 
study it in a series of sections that cut across the whole 
life of the locus, reaching from the days of the primitive 
shepherds who came from the Alban Hills, by the kings, 
the consuls, and the popes, to the days of King Humbert. 
And it is to this fact that Rome owes so much of that 
interest which, stay as long as one will, seems never to 
grow old. 1 

A man of large humanity visiting Rome is little likely 
to lose himself in material things or in the past. He 
cannot become so absorbed in the Rome typified by the 
oratory of S. Clemente, or by the imperial basilica, or by 
the present church, as to be insensible to the men about 
him. Are they not flesh and blood like himself? Do 
they not comprise one of the Romes, the latest one, and 
the most practical? The city offers to the visitor its 

1 Professor Lanciani observes that the Romans of the Middle 
Ages took advantage as well as they conld of the existing ruins, 
transforming them, or portions of them, into churches and con- 
vents and private dwellings. After mentioning many such cases, 
he observes: "Nearly one-half of the thousand and more 
churches and shrines registered in Rome in the fourteenth century 
were indicated by the titles — in thermis, in porticu, in maximis, 
in archione, in formis, in palatio, in piscina." "The example set 
by the clergy in appropriating the above descriptive terms was 
followed closely by the noblemen of the age," as the Sevelli, the 
Conti, etc. — Ancient Rome, Preface. 



342 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

present, living, human problems as well as its dead and 
antiquarian problems; and he must be made of stone, 
particularly if he has followed on the historic page, or, 
better still, in the current daily news, that stream of 
Italian events which bears on from the fatal field of 
Novara to the occupation of the Quirinal Palace by the 
King of United Italy. He is rather the more interested 
in the questions of the day by reason of their histori- 
cal antecedents. The letters S. P. Q. R. fill you with 
strange emotion when you see them on a steam fire- 
engine, a police-station, or a garbage wagon, and still 
more when you see them blazoned on the walls of a 
modern schoolhouse. Such, at least, was my own feeling 
when, in the Autumn of 1891, I found the hours of the 
fleeting days all too few, used them as best I could, even 
to dull the edge of curiosity. I shall venture to place 
before my readers the results of some inquiries and obser- 
vations made at the time, in relation to one of the most 
practical of present interests. 

The whole subject of Italian education deserves a fuller 
presentation to the American public than it has yet 
received; but I shall attempt nothing more than a general 
view of what was accomplished in popular education at 
Rome in the twenty years following the downfall of the 
Secular Power. 

Previous to 1870, such a thing as a public school was 
wholly unknown to the Romans, and the very idea and 
name were strange. The Pope ruled the city and prov- 
ince, and his civil and political agents were ecclesiastics. 
Education was wholly in the hands of priests; moreover 
there was little of it, and this little poor in quality. This is 
conclusively shown by the astonishing number of adult 
persons, and particularly of women, who were wholly 



TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME. 



343 



unable to read and write. But on the incorporation of 
the Papal States into the Kingdom of Italy, the system of 
public education that Italian statesmen and educators had 
been developing for some years preceding, was immmedi- 
ately introduced, and has since been in operation, subject 
to such changes as naturally attend a growing system 
of schools in virgin soil in a time of great educational 
activity. Although the difficulties to be overcome were 
great, the results obtained the first year were anything 
but discouraging, as the following table copied from 
the official records for the scholastic year 1870-71, will 
show: 





« 
d 
o 
O 
W 
o 

CO 


CO 

w 
en 

w 
< 
u 


o 


Q . 

5< 




14 
8 
8 
9 
1 

1 


44 
29 
30 
15 
1 

1 


2,564 

1,186 

1,983 

494 

40 

24 


2,304 

1,049 

1,336 

391 


Free Citj- Day Schools forGirls 








30 






Suburban and Rural Evening Schools for Boys 

Suburban and Rural Feast Day Schools for Boys.... 


21 


Totals 


41 


120 


6,291 


5,331 







The number of pupils examined in all the schools was 3,324; the number 
promoted 1,518. 

Such was the infancy of the public schools of Rome. 
If anyone thinks it a small beginning, he must remember 
that Rome itself was not made in a day. Such explana- 
tions as some of the terms call for will be deferred until 
some further tables have been given. Since that first 
year, the reports reveal encouraging progress along two 
lines: The variety of schools maintained, or the range of 
instruction provided, and the number of schools of all 
kinds, of classes, and of pupils, which present still larger 
ratios. The following table will illustrate the progress 



344 



STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 



that has been made along the second of these lines. The 
dates occur at intervals of five years, save alone the last 
interval, which is four years: 



SCHOLASTIC 








ATTEND- 


YEAR. 


SCHOOLS. 


CLASSES. 


ENROLLED. 


ANCE. 


1870-71 


41 


120 


6,291 


5,331 


1875-76 


90 


437 


17,376 


11,777 


1880-81 


155 


616 


21,311 


15,909 


1885-86 


144 


696 


24,876 


19,245 


1889-90 


142 


624 


26,149 


19,951 



A sectional view of the schools of the city for the last 
year included in the table is still more interesting. 



Free City Day Schools for Boys 

Free City Day Schools for Girls ,. 

Free City Evening Schools for Boys 

Free City Feast Day Schools for Girls 

Suburban and Rural Day Schools for Boys 

Suburban and Rural Day Schools for Girls 

Suburban and Rural Evening Schools for Boys 

Suburban and Rural Feast Day Schools for Girls.. 

Pay Elementary Day Schools for Boys 

Pay Elementary Day Schools for Girls 

Pay Kindergartens 

Free Kindergartens 

Preparatory Schools for Ornamental Arts 

Free Evening Schools for Artizans 

Primary Courses in Schools for Artisans 

Superior Female School Fusinato Erminia Fera... 

Professional Female School Via della Missione 

Professional Female School Teresa Chigi Torlonia 

Evening Commercial School for Boys 

Feast Day Commercial School for Girls 

Commercial School for Girls 

Totals 



o 


W 
en 







W 


< 


W J 


u 


hJ 


q 


H < 


Cfi 


u 


oi 


< 


18 


182 


8,008 


6,519 


25 


244 


9,765 


8,069 


9 


43 


1,179 


794 


11 


51 


871 


658 


22 


25 


695 


496 


13 


15 


407 


308 


20 


22 


506 


333 


11 


19 


96 


69 


1 


7 


222 


189 


2 


16 


322 
941 

958 


256 




1 




358 


3 




165 


152 






263 


179 






66 


64 






698 


693 






159 


157 




8 


180 


151 






217 


209 






74 


67 


142 


624 


26,149 


19,519 



The total number examined was 15, 
11,117. 



and the total number promoted 



This table is the more interesting by reason of the 
strange terms that occur. They suggest to us a system 
of popular education different in some of its features from 
our own- Still, for the most part, these terms explain 



TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME. 345 

themselves; only two or three call for explanation. The 
feast-day schools for girls are held on Sundays and other 
religious days, and they answer a purpose similar to the 
purposes subserved by the evening schools for boys. It 
must not be hastily concluded that such schools are neces- 
sarily of little value; Church days are very abundant in 
Italy, as in all other Catholic countries; and antecedently 
there is no reason why such schools should not be made 
almost as efficient as the continuation schools of Germany. 
The suburban and rural schools lie outside of the city 
walls. One of the most encouraging features of Roman 
education is the marked prominence of schools for girls. 
Of the 26,149 pupils enrolled, 11,818 were in boys' 
schools and 14,831 in girls' schools. The last school on 
the list was but three years old when the list was made up. 
It took the girl at the age of fourteen or fifteen and car- 
ried her through a three years' course of practical studies, 
including two or three modern languages, with a view of 
fitting her for a clerk, or accountant, in business life. 
The word " professional" must not be taken too seriously. 
The Professional School for Women in the Street of the 
Mission is professional only in respect to domestic and 
industrial arts. It is established in an old ecclesiastical 
building, not at all convenient for its purposes, and gives 
instruction to about eight hundred girls and young ladies 
in literary and practical studies. Reading, writing, com- 
position, geography, arithmetic, drawing, literature, and 
French are intermingled with dress-making, shirt-making, 
washing, ironing, cooking, the making of artificial flowers, 
embroidery of various kinds, and other similar arts. The 
school has a regular course of study, and it allows to 
pupils a certain liberty of choice of studies. It is a most 
interesting school, and is full of promise for the Roman 
women. 



346 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The cost of a system of schools at different times is 
still another gauge of its growth. The cost of the Roman 
system at intervals of five years is as follows: 

1871 579,375 lire. 

1876 1,064,097 " 

1881 1,434,662 " 

1886 1,891,377 " 

1889, the last year for which the cost is given 2,760,816 " 

From every point of view the tables given above are 
instructive and encouraging; they are just such tables as 
inspire confidence in an educational statistician, revealing 
as they do a continuous, normal growth. Much more, 
these tables would show towards the end some of the col- 
umns halting and even falling backward, but the ready 
and true explanation is the great financial embarrassment 
of the municipal and national governments in recent years. 
It will be seen that the number of classes increased more 
than five-fold, and the number of pupils four-fold, within 
the period that the exhibit covers. For a New England 
or Western city of 400,000 people, 624 classes and 26,149 
pupils in elementary schools may not be a very large show- 
ing, but for Rome, in 1890, it was a most gratifying one 

Failing to find in the annual statement for 1890 a sum- 
mary of the pupils in the several classes, I give the num- 
bers for a single school. But they must be prefaced with 
some remarks concerning the Italian method of grading. 
At the bottom of the scale is found the asilo, which an- 
swers in a general way to the German kindergarten. 
Then follow the five elementary classes, marked with 
Roman numerals, I, II, III, forming what is called the 
inferior course, and IV and V, the superior course. It 
may be observed that, in the country schools and in towns 
where the grading system is not fully carried out, the 
asilo is not found, and most elementary work is done in 



TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME. 347 

the regular classes. These observations will make the 
following table more intelligible: 

ANALYSIS OF THE PUPILS IN THE SCHOOL REGINA 
MARGHERITA. 

CLASS. BOYS. GIRLS. TOTALS 

Asilo 81 58 149 

I 269 171 440 

II , 220 91 311 

III 102 59 161 

IV 89 39 128 

V 54 19 73 

Total 815 437 1,252 

Most of the public schools of Rome are found in build- 
ings erected for other than school purposes. The reason 
is two-fold: the confiscation of Church property, convents, 
monasteries, and the like, swept into the possession of the 
State a multitude of buildings, the kingdom over, that 
could be used for schools, while the insufficiency of public 
revenues has prevented the erection of more suitable 
structures. But some new ones have been built. The 
School Regina Margherita, beyond the Tiber, is one of 
the best in the city; it is one of the schools to which vis- 
itors are taken, for Italian school oificers are as partic- 
ular about such matters as are our own. It is the 
school whose pupils are analyzed above, and it must 
be distinctly understood that some other schools would 
not make as good a showing. Now, this school is in 
some features the most admirable school-house that I 
have ever visited. It is thoroughly modern in all its ap- 
pointments; it is well constructed in every way, lighted 
and warmed, while the halls and cloak-rooms are Well 
arranged. The steps and principal flights of stairs are of 
marble; the rooms are well furnished with maps and 
other illustrative appliances; there are gymnasiums for 



348 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

boys and girls, and a bath-room for boys, with a half 
dozen douche baths; the carpenter shop is well supplied 
with tools and models, and a pretty garden is found in the 
rear of the building. A picture of King Humbert hangs in 
every room. The building accommodates from 1,200 to 
1,800 pupils, and employs thirty or more teachers. The 
girls' classes are taught by women, and some of the boys' 
classes also. A director and directress preside over the 
two departments, for the sexes are kept separate. The 
order is excellent, and much attention is paid to teaching 
patriotism, decorum, and politeness. As I left the build- 
ing, the severest criticism that I could make upon the 
school authorities was that they had not sufficiently con- 
sulted economy of space and money. 

Elementary instruction in Italy does not compare favor- 
ably with similar instruction found in the well-educated 
countries, such as Germany and Switzerland. The com- 
pulsory period is only three years, corresponding to the 
inferior course, and even for that limited time the law is 
not well enforced. The programme for the Province and 
City of Rome embraces studies practically like those 
found in corresponding grades in our own schools — the 
Italian language, reading and writing, object lessons, 
poems and prose extracts committed to memory, arith- 
metic, geography, and history, the last of course of a very 
rudimentary kind. The superior course embraces more 
extended instruction in the foregoing studies, and calig- 
raphy, physics, and natural history, free-hand drawing of 
geometrical figures, rules of measurement, grammar, and 
literature in addition. The course of the suburban and 
rural schools is inferior to that of the city schools. 

The Roman school year is ten months, beginning the 
middle of October and closing the middle of August. 
American and English residents say the instruction in 



TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME. 349 



the public schools is good, and my own limited obser- 
vation tends to confirm their testimony. The attention 
paid to patriotism, decorum, and politeness, may again 
be remarked upon. There were, in 1891, about 600 
teachers, 200 men and 400 women. Iyike Italian salaries 
generally, teachers' salaries are low. This can be shown 
by a table. At the close of January, 1892, there were em- 
ployed in the public schools of Rome and its suburbs 582 
teachers, of whom 188 were men and 394 women. 
The following is an exhibit of the salaries that they 
received: 

MEN. 

9 City Principals 3,000 lire.* 

6 Rural Principals 2,200 

171 City Teachers .. 2,400 

54 " " 2,200 

14 " " 1,900 

31 " " 1,600 

1 Rural Teacher 1,800 

7 Rural Teachers 1,600 

7 " " 1,200 

3 " " 720 

WOMEN. 

14 City Principals 2,000 

8 Rural Principals 1,800 

49 City Teachers 2,100 

44 " " 2,000 

65 " " 1,800 

74 " " .." 1,500 

134 " " 1,200 

19 " " on trial 800 

2 Rural Teachers 1,400 

6 " " 1,200 

1 Rural Teacher 1,000 

9 Rural Teachers (assistants), from 360 to 480 

In Rome teachers' salaries are advanced once in five 
years until the maximum is reached. 

*A franc, worth 19>^ cents. 



350 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

The depreciatory remark that has been dropped above 
must be understood in a relative sense. Italy has not had 
the educational experience of New England, of Germany, 
or of France. Still, the statistics prove most conclusively 
that a perceptible impression has been made upon the 
dense masses of ignorance that the old regime bequeathed 
to Modern Italy. An expressive word is found in Italian 
educational statistics. It is analfabeti, unlettered, illiter- 
ate, " unalphabeted," as one might say. Taking the 
whole kingdom together, the percent of analfabeti, 
irrespective of age, at the dates given, is as follows: 



r^AR. 


MAI,ES. 


FEMALES. 


TOTAI, 


1861 


72.40 


83.73 


78.06 


1871 


67.04 


78.94 


72.96 


1881 


61.03 


73.51 


67.26 



Ominously enough, Rome does not appear in the statis- 
tics previous to the downfall of the Secular Papacy; but, 
from 1871 to 1881, the percentage of persons in the Com- 
partment of Rome, above six years of age, who could 
read, was raised, males, from 37.73 to 48.24; females, from 
25.93 to 35.39, and the total from 32.32 to 41.84. As late 
as 1888, 56.30 per cent, of the women, and 32.3 per cent, 
of the men, entering into marriages were unable to sign 
their marriage papers and made their marks. 

I shall close with a translation of the final paragraph of 
the course of study prescribed for the Roman schools: 

DUTIES. — Without making the subject of their duties a special 
matter of study or examination, the master should not neglect 
opportunities for making his pupils sensible of the duties which 
they owe towards God, towards their neighbors, and towards them- 
selves; seeking above all to inspire them with a respect for justice, 
and to cultivate such sentiments as constitute the most precious 
patrimony of civilization, and may conduce to an orderly, peace- 
able, and progressive state of society. It may be said that there is 
no branch of teaching that cannot be led in this direction. In 



TWENTY YEARS OF PUBLIC SCHOOLS IN ROME. 351 

particular, the master must not neglect to avail himself of the 
lessons in geography and history, in order to make the pupil 
understand what sacrifices have been required to make the consti- 
tution of Italy such as it is to-day, and how Italians can hope for 
no security but in the maintenance of the national unity. 




XVIII. 

RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN THE 

SCHOOLS OF GERMANY. 1 

ROM an article now lying before me, written 
by a well-informed American journalist, I 
quote the following sentences: 

The number of atheists in Germany is very- 
large. The number of skeptics — that is, of persons who have a 
private religion of their own, the nature of which they consider 
nobody else's business— is still larger. But larger than all is the 
class who dislike and despise the clergy, and will on no account 
permit them to educate their children. All these classes together 
include a very large proportion of the German culture and intelli- 
gence. . . . In.no other country have the commercial and 
professional men got so far away from the Church. They have, in 
fact, got so far away that to the bulk of them American and 
English piety is absolutely incomprehensible. 2 

This is from the secular standpoint. From the Ameri- 
can Evangelical standpoint, Germany is the land of mate- 
rialistic unbelief, of destructive Biblical criticism, of reli- 
gious formalism, and of spiritual coldness. To the zealous 
American Christian the phrase "German rationalism" 
suggests ideas and feelings quite as unwelcome as those 
awakened by the phrase ' ' French infidelity' ' one hundred 
years ago. An educated German theologian and teacher 
told me in Dresden that he had spent some time in 
England, and that many men who were there accounted 
heretics would in Germany be considered orthodox be- 

1 Berlin, February, 1892. 

2 The Nation, February 4, 1892, p 81. 

352 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 353 

lievers. These facts are so well known that they call for 
no especial emphasis. 

It is probable that some persons, looking at these facts 
from a distance, would attribute them to deficient reli- 
gious instruction in childhood. To one taking a superfi- 
cial view of the subject, that would, perhaps, seem the 
readiest and best explanation. Nevertheless, it would be 
very wide of the mark. Whatever the causes of the 
existing state of affairs may be, they are certainly 
not lack of religious instruction in the formative period 
of life. In no states in the world is more attention 
paid to the religious instruction of children than in the 
German States; in no other Protestant states is so much 
emphasis laid on the subject in public schools as in those of 
North Germany. 

For example, in Prussia and Saxony education is com- 
pulsory on all children from six to fourteen years of age. 
The laws are so stringent, and their administration is so 
thorough, that illiteracy is practically annihilated. In 
the great city of Berlin, there are not as many illiterate 
men of the proper population as would fill one of the 
large omnibuses that roll along the street. Still more, 
the courses of study in the schools include formal didactic 
religious instruction. In the elementary schools of Prus- 
sia four hours a week for the whole eight years is de- 
voted to religion, which is just the time that is given to 
arithmetic, and is also one-seventh of the time given to 
all subjects whatsoever. In the other schools, the regi- 
men is quite as thorough. In the girls' high schools the 
ratio of time devoted to religion to that devoted to all 
subjects is 20 to 240; in the gymnasia, 19 to 304. In the 
Saxon Normal Schools it is 23 to 272. In the universi- 
ties, save in the theological faculty, the subject passes 
wholly out of sight. 



354 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

To present the subject still more fully, I give a tran- 
script of the course in religion found in the elementary 
schools of Saxony. The form is abridged, but the sub- 
stance is retained. The Lehrplan begins with declaring 
that religious instruction has for its object the develop- 
ment of religious, moral thoughtfulness, the awakening 
of the corresponding feelings, and a true Christian life — 
certainly a very noble ideal. This is the course: — 

Class VIII. , a. Bible history. — The Creation; Abraham and Lot; 
Joseph; the birth of Moses and his flight from Egypt; the Law 
given; the golden calf. Birth of Jesus; the wise men; Jesus 12 
years old; marriage at Cana; heavy draught of fishes; the youth at 
Nain; Jairus's daughter; feeding the 5,000; Jesus blessing the 
children; the Prodigal Son; the Good Samaritan. Early in the 
year religious narratives from Bible history may be given in 
advance. 

Class VII., a. Bible history. — Classes VII. -V., inclusive, will 
review the history already given, as well as learn the new lessons: 
The fall of man; Noah and the flood; call of Moses; Ruth; Ish- 
mael; David and Goliath; David and Saul. The birth of John; 
flight to Egypt; baptism of Jesus; storm at sea; the rich man and 
Lazarus; entrance into Jerusalem; Jesus a prisoner, before the 
council, before Pilate; death, burial, and resurrection. 

Classes VIII. and VII., b.— Explanation of verses; verses im- 
pressed by repetition by the pupils. In Class VII. instruction 
given about learning by heart portions of Bible history, or of 
ether history of a religious nature, explained. 

Class VI., a. Bible history. — Tower of Babel; Abraham's call; 
Isaac's marriage; Jacob and Esau; Jacob's flight and reconcilia- 
tion with Esau; death of Moses; entrance of Israelites into the 
promised land; Saul king; David anointed; David king; Na- 
both's vineyard. The apostles chosen; the centurion at Caper- 
naum; Jesus at Bethesda; the ten lepers; the wicked servant; the 
widow's mite; the blind man at Jericho; Jesus in Gethsemane, his 
condemnation and ascension. 

Class VI., b. Religious themes. — Apothegms, sentences, Bible 
verses and history; the Shorter Catechism, etc., used in consider- 
ing them. The duties of reciprocal love, gratitude, trust, obedi- 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 355 

ence, and prayer deduced from God's love; conduct towards rela- 
tives, teachers, fellow-students, strangers, trie feeble, and the old; 
modesty, reverence, sympathy, rights of property, conduct to- 
wards animals, plants, and artistic work, etc., considered; also 
care for the health, contentedness, frugality, etc. 

Class V., a. Bible history. — Cain and Abel; promises to Abra- 
ham; Sodom and Gomorrah; flight and call of Moses; Moses be- 
fore Pharaoh; departure from Egypt; journey through the wilder- 
ness; David's sin. Prophecy and birth of Jesus; teaching and 
baptism of John; the palsied man; parable of the sower; the 
Pharisee and the publican; Mary and Martha; the passover and 
establishment of the Lord's Supper; Jesus a prisoner, before the 
council, before Pilate, death, resurrection, and appearance after 
death. 

Class V-, b. — Explanation of religious themes. Such themes to 
be taken from the doctrine of the Church, the emphasis placed 
upon the disposition and actions. Much that was treated in 
Class VI. to be reviewed; the following themes to be presented: 
God's works, qualities, and ways; Jesus, the Son of God, as 
worker of miracles, teacher, and example; value of earthly and 
heavenly possessions; results of good and evil; knowledge of sin, 
temptation, repentance, forgiveness, concerning death, and the 
future life. 

In Classes IV. and III. Bible history is to be presented in its 
connection, as a history of the kingdom of God on earth. In 
Class IV. the Old Testament is taken; in Class III. the New 
Testament. In both classes, at the high church feasts, New Testa- 
ment history relative thereto taken for religious meditation. 
Knowledge of the Holy Land acquired in connection with Bible 
history. 

Class IV., a. Old Testament history taken in preceding classes 
reviewed. The offering of Isaac; times of the Judges; David's 
persecutions; Absalom's revolt; the temple built; the kingdom 
divided; Elijah and Elisha; the Assyrian captivity; Tobias; the 
Babylonian captivity; Daniel; return from Babylon. 

Class IV., b. Instruction in Catechism. — The first chapter and 
first article; the commandments; instructions concerning life in 
parish and State, love of country, family life; true and false pleas- 
ures; value of health and other worldly goods; trust in God, con- 



356 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

tentment, hopeful foresight, absence of sinful desires and danger- 
ous passions, etc. ; in a word, whatever can equip the children 
with a true knowledge of life, inspire them with good designs and 
a feeling for truth, and strengthen in them right and virtue. 

Class III. , a. New Testament history continued. — Presenta- 
tion of Jesus in the Temple; his temptation; conversation with 
the woman of Samaria; parable of the tares; death of John; the 
Canaanitish woman; the deaf and dumb man; workers in the 
vinyard; transfiguration; raising of Lazarus; the angry vineyard- 
keeper; Zaccheus; the ten virgins; last judgment; Jesus appears 
at Bmmaus; out-pouring of the Holy Spirit. 

Class III., b. Instruction in the Catechism. — The second and 
third articles of the first chapter, and the third chapter. 

Classes II. and I., a. Bible knowledge. — The aim is not 
merely to instruct concerning the Bible, but also, through read- 
ing and explanation of chapters, to introduce the contents of the 
most important books. The finding of books and chapters of the 
Bible constantly practiced. Continued attention given to the 
geography of the Holy Land. 

Class II., b. The Catechism. — Treatment of the first chapter, 
first article, and the doctrine of the sacraments after the words 
pronounced by Jesus at the institucion of the Eucharist. 

Class I., b. The Catechism. — Treatment of the second and third 
articles, and the third, fourth, and fifth chapters. 

This is the course prescribed for the State Evangelical 
schools of Saxony. In the State Catholic schools the 
instruction follows Catholic lines, while children of other 
churches that are recognized by the State may be taught 
according to their respective faiths. But the main fact 
is, that the above course, or its equivalent, is just as com- 
pulsory as the courses in geography, in language, or in 
history. The law leaves no loophole for escape. A 
father may indeed send his child to a private school, or 
have him taught at home, but the State follows the child 
to see that the legal quantum of religious instruction is 
given. In effect, the policeman stands behind the Bible 
and the Catechism. How very thorough the enforcement 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 357 

of the law is in Prussia, is shown by the royal decrees 
determining authority and responsibility in respect to 
religious instruction. The following is a summary of the 
principal of these decrees: — 

(1). Decision as to the character of religious instruction depends 
principally upon the father. 

(2). It is the father's duty to see that the child receive religious 
instruction conformable to his faith and condition in life. 

(3). Children born in wedlock must receive instruction in the 
religion of the father. 

(4). No legal contracts can be made to change the rule sub 3. 

(5). In the case of mixed marriages, agreements made before or 
at marriage to train the children in the religion of the mother 
have no legal force. 

(6). If father and mother, however, agree as to the religious 
instruction their children are to receive, no third person has 
authority to interfere. 

(7). At the death of the father, the religious instruction in 
his faith must be continued. 

(8). No attention is to be paid to death-bed conversions to 
another faith. 

(9). If, however, the child has received, the last entire year 
before death of father, religious instruction according to the 
mother's faith, this instruction must be continued until the said 
child be fourteen years of age. 

(10). After the death of the father, it becomes the duty of the 
court for guardianship ( Vormundschaftsgerichf) to see that the 
child receive religious instruction according to law. 

(11). Children born out of wedlock receive, until 14 years of 
age, religious instruction according to the faith of the mother. 

(12). They who assume care of a child abandoned by his parents 
acquire the rights of parents, and, therefore, decide as to the 
character of religious instruction until said child be 1 4 years of age . 

(13). The same rule holds good in the case of adopted children. 

(14). When 14 years of age, children can decide for themselves 
as to the religious denomination to which they will belong. 

(15). Before 14 years of age, no religious denomination can 
receive a child or permit an open confession of faith other than 
that to which said child belongs by law. * 

1 Parsons: Prussian Schools through American Eyes, pp. 21, 22. 



358 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Two cardinal ideas underlie these decrees. The first 
is that every man belongs to some church, and the second 
that his children, up to the age of fourteen years, belong 
to the same church, The first of these ideas is a survival 
from the time when every nation or state had one national 
church or religious establishment, to which every mem- 
ber of the state belonged just as naturally and necessarily 
as he belonged to the national government. In other 
words, the State and the Church were simply the secular 
and the religious sides of the same society. The Protes- 
tant Reformation, by destroying religious unity in Ger- 
many, compelled the recognition of a plurality of churches, 
and demolished the theological basis of the State- 
Church theory, but it did not destroy the idea that 
every man belongs to some church, that his children 
come into the world wearing the same church ticket 
that he wears, and that the state must see that they 
are taught the doctrines of his church. Of course, if 
the state is to teach religion in confessional schools the 
' ' ticket ' ' plan is the only one that can be practically 
followed. 

To make it possible to carry out these decrees, the 
schools of cities and towns where the conditions admit of 
it are organized on a confessional or church basis. The 
religious instruction given in the mixed schools of the 
rural districts is governed by the religion of the plurality 
of the children in attendance, or of the families to which 
they belong. Still, where twelve children in such school 
demand it, or their parents for them, they receive reli- 
gious instruction conformable to that of the church to 
which they belong, and, to make this the more easy, 
schools are united for this purpose wherever it is conve- 
nient to do so. The following table will show how the 
system worked in Prussia in 1886 ; 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 359 

NO. OF 
SCHOOI<S. TEACHERS. PUPILS. 

Protestant 23,122 41,539 2,993,852 

Catholic 10,061 19,632 1,613,497 

Other Christians 12 31 870 

Jewish 318 407 13,270 

Mixed , 503 3,141 216,758 

Total 34,016 64,750 4,838,247 

In 318 of the mixed schools there were special religious 
teachers; 54,950 Catholic pupils attended Protestant 
schools, and 25,878 Protestant pupils Catholic schools. 
It must not be supposed, however, that we are here deal- 
ing with Church schools; on the contrary, these are all 
State schools, but State schools divided with reference to 
the kind of religious instruction given in them. 

But we are here concerned with the moral results of the 
course. The main question is, how the present religious 
condition of Germany can exist side by side with such a 
regimen of religious instruction as is found in the schools. 
This is one of the most important practical questions that 
religious men in Germany, and particularly teachers and 
preachers, can possibly ask. Still, it may be doubted 
whether many of them often do ask it, if indeed, they ever 
do. It is an important practical question for English- 
men, and particularly of the Established Church. It 
is important also in the United States, but less so than 
in the other countries just named. It is a question well 
worthy of consideration at the hands of all those who are 
engaged in the work of religious and moral training. If 
a full and conclusive answer cannot be given, a partial 
one may not be without value. All that I can do is to 
state some of the principal considerations that would 
enter most deeply into a thorough treatment. 



360 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

It should be premised that the failure is not due to any 
lack of thoroughness in the course of study, or to 
any laxity in the directions given to teachers. The 
reader must be impressed by that fact. The course 
begins with stating the objects of religious instruction, viz. : 
To promote religious, moral thoughtfulness through Bible 
history and the teachings of the Church, to make religious 
truths and moral ideas clearly understood, to awaken the 
corresponding feelings, and thereby to lay the foundation 
for a true religion and a good moral life. The Bible 
narratives chosen by the teacher are to be of religious 
purport. The teacher is fully to explain the lessons, and 
the pupil is to commit verses and passages of Scripture to 
memory. The moral lessons are of the most practical 
kind, and are to be deduced from religious principles. 
The Catechism is introduced. It is declared that with 
the attainment of a clear understanding of a doctrine, 
comes the awakening of a religious feeling. Religious 
meditation is to be secured, and the religious element 
in the commandments emphasized. The Bible lessons 
are • to be explained in connection with the songs that 
are sung and the parts of the Catechism that are taught, 
and are also to be associated with Sundays and religious 
holidays. The course is marked by the skill shown by the 
German pedagogists in all similar work, and the more 
carefully it is studied the more, pedagogically speaking, 
it will be admired. Why, then, is it so largely nugatory 
and fruitless of results ? 

The first fact to be considered is the Established 
Churches of the German States, Protestant and Catholic. 
There are also certain religious organizations that are 
called ''recognized," which means that they are legal 
persons, entitled to own property and to carry on public 
worship, subject only to the general laws of the land. In 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 361 

Prussia these are the separatist Lutheran and Reformed 
Churches (consisting of those Lutherans and Calvinists 
who have never come into the State Protestant Church 
resulting from the union of 1817), and the Jews, the 
Baptists, the Mennonites, and the Moravians. The non- 
recognized Churches are not legal persons, and can own 
property and hold public worship only under special 
arrangements. Here come in the Methodists, the Irving- 
ites, and other small sects. Not wishing to encourage 
sectarian divisions, the government is slow to recognize 
religious societies. The recognized and non-recognized 
groups are few in number, and the great establishments 
control the principal religious forces of Germany. 

The German religious statistics, unlike our own, are 
given in great masses. For 1890 they stand as follows: 

Protestants 31,026,810 

Roman Catholics 17,674,921 

Other Christians 145,540 

Jews .' 667,884 

Unclassified 13,315 

The State Churches have the limitations that always 
surround such bodies. These are reliance on the govern- 
ment, and lack of individual initiative; the relegation of 
Church work to the clergy and the absence of an active 
lay element, and particularly of a woman element; 
the supremacy of the State; the tendency of religion to 
lapse into routine officialism, — in a word, pronounced 
tendencies towards a dead indifferent ism in faith and cold 
inertness in religious life. In England the Established 
Church is vital and active, largely because it is constantly 
stimulated by the powerful influence of Nonconformity, 
while the revenues of the Church are by no means suf- 
ficient for its purposes and it is compelled to appeal con- 
stantly to the voluntary principle. The case is very dif- 



362 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

ferent in Germany: Nonconformity is not an important 
factor in religious affairs. The ministers of the Evan- 
gelical Church are appointed by the State, and to a great 
extent paid by it, a dependence that tends to create any- 
thing but real fitness for their work. Preaching is mainly 
expository and doctrinal, tending to dulness, and not 
taking much hold of the heart and the life. While it 
must not be supposed that there are no religious men and 
no piety in Germany, it is still a fact that the splendid 
liberality and activity shown by the voluntary churches of 
America and England are practically unknown. For 
instance, there is not a parish in Berlin belonging to 
either one of the Established Churches that would, for a 
moment, think it could build a church for itself. Is it 
not the business of the State to build churches? Accord- 
ingly German piety is about as incomprehensible to an 
American as American piety is to a German. 

Again, since the two great Churches are a part of the 
government, and they share the opposition that is made to 
the government. In the eyes of the discontented classes, 
ministers and the Church are no better than the rest of 
the State machinery. Religion necessarily becomes 
a part of politics. The Catholics and Conservatives 
are strongly religious, or rather ecclesiastical, while men 
of progressive views in politics commonly tend more or 
less to liberalism, unbelief, or atheism. The current 
socialism is almost wholly atheistic. 

The bearing of these facts on the sterility of the 
religious instruction given in the schools should be 
evident to the dullest mind, at least outside of Germany. 
To the Socialists, for example, the teachers who give the 
instruction in theological dogmas and Bible lessons are 
teaching what they consider the most odious part of the 
system of oppression under which they groan. They 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 363 

rebel at the thought of having such lessons forced down 
the throats of their children with the policeman's sabre. 
Secondly, the unbelief, indifferent ism, and inertia that 
are so characteristic of German religion also mark the 
teaching of religion in the schools. Probably some im- 
moral persons find places and hold places in the schools; 
far larger is the number who are rationalistic or atheistic in 
their opinions; while largest of all is the class that, what- 
ever their formal religious status may be, have no real 
heart in this part of their work. The grand result is that, 
while there are many really religious teachers, and much 
excellent teaching, the system, as a whole, tends to dull 
routine and perfunctory officialism. Not long ago a 
Jewess advertised in one of the Berlin papers for pupils as 
a private teacher, putting in the list of her qualifications 
this one — that she could teach any religion that might be 
desired ! Even a pious man may be forgiven for shaking 
his sides at such monstrous absurdity, but it is a legiti- 
mate result of the State's attempting to teach religion 
after the German fashion. To the majority of pupils 
1 ' religion ' ' becomes merely a study, like arithmetic or 
geography; they " take it," as they take mathematics or 
science; and although they may acquire some facts in so 
doing, and so receive some mental enlightenment, their 
hearts are not warmed or their wills strengthened thereby. 
The Saxon course states: ' 'With the attainment of a clear 
understanding of a doctrine, comes the awakening of a 
moral, religious feeling. ' ' This is so unmistakably erron- 
eous that the Saxon pedagogists should not have fallen 
into the error. 

. Lastly, the connection between teaching dogmas, or 
abstract lessons of any kind, and real life is by no means as 
intimate as the majority of men suppose. If there are any 
lessons in the world that will wither under mere routine or 



364 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

formal teaching; if there are any lessons that, to be fruit- 
ful, must be touched by the influence of a warm heart and 
a good life, they are morals and religion. The concrete 
precedes the abstract; example is better than precept; life 
is more than theory. Still, these facts are in practice 
constantly ignored or forgotten. In the face of a 
uniform experience that character is formed and life 
shaped by personal influences far more than by for- 
mal didactic instruction, multitudes of men constantly 
assume that the catechism, the lesson-leaf, the sermon, 
and the Bible are the great factors in moral and reli- 
gious training. 

Not very long ago it was commonly thought that the 
public school was a powerful moral safeguard of the indi- 
vidual and of society. And so it is. Still, we are coming 
to see that nothing is easier than to exaggerate the moral 
value of school studies. The fact is that the ethical bearing 
of general studies upon men is by no means as direct and 
powerful as some have been wont to think. Something 
more than the spelling-book and the arithmetic is necessary 
to make good men and women. A further mistake that we 
have yet to correct is this — that we have also overestimated 
the spiritual value of moral and religious ideas, simply as 
intellectually apprehended and received. There can be 
no greater pedagogical mistakes than the assumptions 
that the intellectual perception of a doctrine or truth 
is necessarily followed by the corresponding feelings, 
and that the feeling when aroused necessarily mani- 
fests itself in conduct. Sound doctrine is indeed im- 
portant; but all history bearing on the subject tells us 
that it is futile, and even absurd, to send a man into 
a pulpit or a school to preach to men or teach them, no 
matter what the doctrine may be, unless he is morally 
superior to his audience or class, 



RELIGIOUS INSTRUCTION IN GERMAN SCHOOLS. 365 

I am far from saying that religious instruction in the 
schools of Germany is not productive of good results. 
Undoubtedly, it is productive of such results. Perhaps, 
in the existing state of things, the course in religion is 
indispensable. But it is evident that it is not accomplish- 
ing the results that its authors expect from it, and that it 
never can accomplish them. This has been practically 
admitted, at least as to the first statement, by the Prussian 
government itself. The Emperor-king and his ministers 
are now seeking to carry through the Diet an educational 
bill that contains features relating to religious instruction 
in schools besides which those enumerated above are mere 
child's play. Its fate is doubtful, but the great argument 
that is urged in its favor is that more stringent measures 
are necessary in order to check the rising tides of atheistic 
socialism. Count Von Caprivi, the Prime Minister, has 
said in debate: "The question before us is not one of 
Protestantism against Catholicism, but of Christianity 
against Atheism. There is a spirit abroad which makes 
itself daily more and more felt, and which is peculiarly 
visible in the schools of Berlin — the spirit of Atheism. 
With a purely moral education not founded on Christian 
principles, we would have but little success with the 
children of the people. We have before us a struggle 
with the spirit of unbelief, which is not necessarily identi- 
cal with the social democracy. In face of this great 
danger, we desire at least to erect a barrier. Do not, I 
pray you, by agitation excite the masses, who are not 
capable of judging on this question. In face of this 
danger, Germans will learn to live together in peace. ' ' 
We shall soon see whether the bill passes, and if it passes 
we shall see later whether the remed}^ proposed cures the 
disease, or, as is far more probable, still further aggra- 
vates it. 



366 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

There is, to be sure, another side to the question. Omit- 
ting the Catechism and the more dogmatic parts of the Bib- 
lical teaching, the Saxon course would be an admirable one 
in many respects to introduce into the schools of the United 
States. The argument that would justify it, however, 
would relate to history and literature quite as much as to 
morals and religion. The Bible is a great book of litera- 
ture and history. It is the classic of the most cultivated 
parts of the world. It has furnished to letters a vast 
number of themes and an enormous amount of thought- 
material and inspiration. Its geography, scenery, events, 
and language have passed, literally or symbolically, into 
the vocabulary of Christendom. None save those who 
have made it the subject of somewhat careful study, are 
aware how far the very forms of our thoughts, as well as 
the thoughts themselves, have come to us from the 
Bible. In an historical and literary point of view, it is 
therefore little less than a calamity that the youth of the 
land should grow up, as so many of them are now 
doing, in comparative ignorance of its contents. There 
is indeed no good reason for rating highly the value of 
such formal religious instruction as can be given in 
public schools. Still, the ethical value of such a course as 
the foregoing, with the emendations suggested, would be 
something, perhaps considerable, and particularly if teach- 
ers, not making this element obtrusive, should leave the 
lessons to carry their own morals. Whether or not, under 
existing conditions, such a course could be successfully 
introduced, is quite another question. 




XIX. 

EDUCATION IN SWITZERLAND.* 

HE month of August witnessed some notable 
Swiss anniversaries. On the first of the 
month the Confederation celebrated the sixth 
centennial, and on the fifteenth the City of 
Bern the seventh, centennial of its foundation. Everybody 
who paid serious attention to these celebrations must have 
reflected that the position of Switzerland in history, and 
in the current life of the world, is much more important 
than her territory, her population, and her natural 
resources would demand, or perhaps even justify; and 
the time has not too far gone by to offer some remarks 
upon one of the causes that have produced this disparity 
and so tended to make the celebrations significant. 

The break down of the Roman Empire left considerable 
culture in Switzerland that the floods of barbarism never 
wholly swept away. The Irish monks, who were the 
evangelists of education as well as of religion, visited this 
country, as they did so many others of Western Europe. 
St. Gall, so famous in the history of both letters and piety, 
was founded in the eighth century by Columban's disciple 
of that name. Switzerland also received her share of 
advantage from the liberal educational ideas and policy of 
Charlemagne, of whose vast empire it was a part. And 
all along the way from that time to this, century by 
century, we find interesting facts in the history of Swiss 
culture, as the humanistic training of Zwingle, the Swiss 

1 Geneva, October, 1891- 



368 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

reformer and friend of Erasmus, and the founding of the 
Universities, which have borne such an honorable part 
in the work of liberal education. Still, we find nothing 
that gives the Swiss an exceptional educational standing 
until we near the close of the last century. Rousseau, 
citizen of Geneva and author of ' ' Emile, ' ' quickened 
educational thought, especially on the French side of the 
Confederacy. But it was Pestalozzi who really ushered 
in the new era. Seizing the bold ideas that form the 
heart of the sense-realistic school of pedagogy, this great 
reformer made Stanz, Burgdorf, Neuhof, and Yverdon 
classic names in the annals of human culture, and gave 
popular education an immense impetus, not only in 
Switzerland, but all over the civilized world. Frcebel, 
with all his mysticism, stands for that enlargement of the 
same ideas which have become so potent a factor in the 
kindergarten methods, and Father Girard, "The Catholic 
Pestalozzi," to whose noble memory a statue has been 
dedicated at Freiburg, while not the equal of the other 
two, completes the trinity of great Swiss pedagogists. 
Withal, far-seeing statesmen have given the thoughts 
of these great thinkers practical realization in state policy. 
No country is more thoroughly committed to public edu- 
cation of the highest order. It should also be observed 
that the more progressive Cantons have recently recon- 
structed their school systems, introducing many foreign 
ideas. 

Education in Switzerland is a matter of both Federal 
and Cantonal concern. These are the provisions of the 
Federal Constitution in regard to the subject: — 

The Confederation has a right to establish, besides the existing 
Polytechnic School, a Federal University and other institutions 
of higher instruction, or to subsidize institutions of such nature. 

The Cantons provide for primary instruction, which shall be 



EDUCATION IN SWITZERLAND. 369 

sufficient, and shall be placed exclusively under the direction of 
the secular authority. It is compulsory and, in the public schools, 
free. 

The public schools shall be such that they may be frequented 
by the adherers of all religious sects, without any offense to their 
freedom of conscious or of belief. 

The Confederation shall take the necessary measures against 
such Cantons as shall not fulfill these duties. 

A delay of five years is allowed to Cantons for the establishment 
of free instruction in primary public education. 1 

The constitution of 1848 authorized the foundation and 
maintenance of a National Polytechnic School and a Na- 
tional University. The first was founded in 1855, one of 
the foremost in the world, but no steps have been taken to 
found the second- The Polytechnic School met an actual 
want; while the existing Cantonal universities were not 
only sufficient to meet the needs of the country, but they 
were supported by interests too powerful jo permit the 
establishment of a formidable competitor. It will be 
seen that the Swiss constitution, unlike our own, which 
is wholly silent upon the subject of education and schools, 
declares that the Cantons shall make primary instruction 
sufficient, compulsory, and free. And yet the states- 
rights principle is vigorous. The declaration that the 
secular authority shall control the public schools, and that 
they shall be such that they may be attended by the 
adherents of all religious sects, are explained by the 
religious divisions of the country, past and present, and 
by the growth of the secular spirit. The schools are thor- 
oughly secularized. No ecclesiastical or clerical person is 
allowed to teach in the State schools. 

The provision in regard to compulsion is first found in 
the Federal Constitution of 1874, but it had appeared in 
the constitution of Bern as early as 1846. Any one who 

1 Article 27, and Temporary Provision, Article 4. 



370 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

has observed the difficulty with which compulsory educa- 
tion is made effective, particularly in democratic states, 
and who also reflects on the manifest disadvantages that 
a federal government attempting that task must encounter, 
cannot help asking what steps the Swiss government has 
taken in this direction, and what success has attended 
them. The fact is, it has never attempted directly to 
enforce this clause, but has left coercion mainly to the 
Cantons. This is partly because the Cantons have shown 
a commendable zeal in the matter, and partly because it 
would be very difficult to procure the necessary Federal 
legislation in the first place, and still more difficult to en- 
force it afterwards. Indirectly something is done, a good 
deal, in fact. The laws in regard to the employment of 
children in certain kinds of manufacturing establishments, 
like similar legislation in England and America, have an 
educational bearing and effect. But, more than this, the 
constitution binds every Swiss citizen who is not dis- 
qualified to perform military service, and the Federal law 
creates an effective system of instruction and drill. The 
existing law requires a literary as well as a medical 
examination of all young men on attaining their 
majority, thus creating a strong safeguard against popu- 
lar ignorance. Mr. Vincent puts the case very mildly 
in his late work on the Swiss Government when he says 
that by ' ' examinations the state of primary educa- 
tion in the various Cantons is exhibited, and by the publi- 
cation of the statistics an honorable rivalry in this field is 
encouraged." 1 He should have added that such recruits 
as are found wanting, are required to make up their de- 
ficiencies, and that special instruction is provided for this 
purpose. In 1882 it was proposed to add a Secretary of 
Education to the number of secretaries constituting the 

1 State and Federal Government of Switzerland, p. 92. 



EDUCATION IN SWITZERLAND. 37 1 

Federal Executive; the people, on its submission to them, 
voted it down, and, such is the opposition to strengthening 
the Confederacy at the expense of the Cantons, there is 
little probability of the attempt being renewed. 

The annual reports of the educational examinations of 
recruits are interesting documents in more respects than 
one. The report of the examinations held in the Autumn 
of 1890, now before me, contains 40 quarto pages. In 
addition to the statistical tables showing the results 
throughout the Confederation by Cantons and districts, 
we find considerable valuable discussion, and a double- 
page chart showing the larger facts in color. Quite 
marked differences in the education of the people appear. 
The best Cantons compare favorably with the States of 
North Germany. While the German and the French 
Cantons, other things being equal, are on the same foot- 
ing, the Italian Cantons fall far into the rear. The con- 
trast between the Protestant and the Catholic Cantons, is 
pronounced. Not only do the Protestant Cantons, as 
a rule, surpass the Catholic, but in the latter the edu- 
cational standard is higher in the proportion that they 
have been touched by modern progressive influences. 
Zurich, for example, makes an excellent showing; but 
that Canton, whose educational institutions date from the 
reign of Charlemagne, contains the largest city in the 
Confederation, and, next to Geneva, has the densest popu- 
lation. Protestant controversialists, noticing the general 
contrast between the two classes of Cantons, have been 
prompt to ascribe it solely to religion. But it should be 
observed that the Catholic Cantons are commonly the 
more mountainous, the less thickly populated, the poorer, 
and the more backward. These facts should not be 
separated; they afford an excellent example of the inter- 
action of social forces, or of the mutuality of cause and 



372 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

effect. Change any one of these factors, and you change 
all the others. 

The Educational Year Book for 1889 shows 21,689 
pupils in kindergartens, 425,012 in primary schools, 
34,817 in continuation schools and schools for recruits, 
27,254 in secondary schools, and 10,845 in private schools 
of various kinds. The total Volksschulstuffe was 547,928 
pupils. The continuation schools (Fortbildwigschulen) , 
held mainly on evenings and Sundays, afford pupils who 
have left the primary schools an opportunity to carry 
their studies two or three years further. The same year 
there were in the so-called middle schools — normal schools, 
gymnasia, industrial schools, etc. — 19,182 students, and 
in the higher institutious 3,611. The grand total is 568,- 
721. How many of these are foreigners cannot be told; 
but were the necessary subtraction made, the showing 
would still be a striking one. 

Equally creditable to the Swiss are their educational 
expenditures. The Cantons, including the Federal 
appropriation for the Polytechnicum, appropriated 12,- 
972,262 francs; the local authorities (Gemeinden), 17,103,- 
814 francs, or a total of 30,076,081 francs. Of this sum 
nearly 19,000,000 francs went to the primary schools, and 
something more than 4,000,000 to the secondary schools. 
In other words, primary education, the country over, 
cost 40 francs, and secondary education 151 francs, to 
the scholar. Such Cantons as Uri, Schwyz, and Unter- 
walden-Nied expend but 3 francs per inhabitant for edu- 
cation; but Zurich, Shaffhausen, and Basel 15, 16, and 
24 francs respectively. The small expenditures go, of 
course, with the sparse and small populations. The aver- 
age for the Confederation is a little more than 10 francs 
per inhabitant. 



EDUCATION IN SWITZERLAND. 373 

It will be seen that the scope of Swiss education is 
modern and comprehensive. Particular attention is paid 
to the practical applications of knowledge, as the tech- 
nical, polytechnic, and industrial schools show. The 
schools of horology, of which there are several, illustrate 
how a leading industry affects education. The noble 
Polytechnicum at Zurich has a hundred professors and 
instructors and 992 students. The seven higher institu- 
tions have 434 professors and instructors and 3,554 stu- 
dents and auditors. 

Perhaps the force of the presentation will be increased 
by narrowing the view. Basel-Stadt, which is co-exten- 
sive with the City of Basel, contains 10 square miles and 
a population of 74,247 souls. In 1889 it had 11,405 
pupils in Volksschulen, 2,376 in middle schools, and 455 
in higher schools, making a total of 14,536. She ex- 
pended for education the same year 1,804,108 francs, or 
about $360,000. Nor does this take into account what 
Basel contributes by the way of the Federal treasury. 
Let it be particularly noted that this little State supports 
a celebrated university, having four faculties, 70 profes- 
sors and instructors, and more than 450 students. Geneva, 
also, which has no doubt exercised a wider influence than 
any other city of its size since Athens, makes a showing 
that is very difficult to parallel. 

Pains are taken that teachers shall be qualified for their 
work, and that their work shall be well done. Every 
teacher must have a normal-school training. A diploma 
from an authorized school of this rank is a certificate to 
teach in the elementary schools. Government inspection 
is universal, extending to private schools as well as public. 
Bern, with 100,000 children in her primary schools, em- 
ploys twelve inspectors, who are appointed by the Cantonal 
council on the nomination of the minister of education. 



374 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

As there are 25 Cantons and half-Cantons, each with its 
own independent government, there are 25 school systems. 
With many divergencies, the systems of the best Cantons, 
like our best States, tend to uniformity of organization 
and machinery. Some Cantons have councils and minis- 
ters of education; some have councils and no ministers, 
and some ministers and no councils. The ministers, 
where they are found, are always members of the Can- 
tonal Executive Councils; for it must be remembered that 
in Switzerland there are no presidents and governors. The 
teaching body has a decided influence upon educational 
administration, but the minister is usually a politician 
and not a teacher. Books and courses of study are 
uniform throughout the Canton. 

The schools are immediately controlled by the Cantonal 
government, or by boards similar to our boards of educa- 
tion; but both councils and boards, particularly in the 
more democratic Cantons, are closely limited in power by 
the popular assemblies. Teachers are sometimes chosen, 
as in Geneva, by the executive council; sometimes by the 
local board, as in the City of Bern; sometimes by the 
people themselves, as in many rural districts. In Bern 
the election is for six years. A high authority tells me 
that in this Canton the teacher's tenure is good when 
once he is elected, but that first elections are sometimes 
controlled by other considerations than fitness. For ex- 
ample, he says when the people elect, the teacher is pretty 
apt to belong to the church of the ma j or ity . This gentleman 
condemns the popular elections of teachers, as he does also 
the furnishing of books by the State, which is sometimes 
done, and the teaching of more than one language in the 
primary schools. 

Measured by American standards, salaries are low. 
No elementary teacher in Bern receives as much as $1,000, 



EDUCATION IN SWITZERLAND. 375 

and many receive less than $200. However, a majority 
of teachers are furnished a house, a piece of ground, and 
wood, in addition to the salary set down in the list. Then 
the preference for male teachers is strong throughout the 
Confederacy; even in the primary schools there are 6,180 
male teachers to 2,970 females. In the secondary schools 
the respective numbers are 1,168 and 205. In the pri- 
mary schools, at least, no difference is made in salary on 
account of sex. It must be remembered that the whole 
scale of incomes and expenditures is low in Switzerland 
as compared with the United States. Members of the 
Federal Legislature receive but 20 francs a day; members 
of the Federal Executive but 12,000 francs a year. The 
maximum university salary is 12,000 francs, the min- 
mum 300 francs, while the average ranges from 3,156 
francs in Zurich to 4,580 in Basel. 

Such is an imperfect survey of one of the groups of 
facts that rendered the August anniversaries important 
events. Switzerland has an area of about 16,000 square 
miles, and a population of about 3,000,000 souls. To- 
gether, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island 
are somewhat less in size, and somewhat more in popula- 
tion. An educational parallel between the Confederation 
and the three States would be extremely interesting. 
This certainly would appear in both cases, that the 
essential elements of greatness in States are not material 
but spiritual. 




XX. 

THE BACKWARDNESS OF POPULAR 

EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 1 

WO facts stand out with prominence in mod- 
ern educational history. The first is that 
England has been very slow to enter on that 
general movement towards universal educa- 
tion which is one of the most significant facts of recent 
times. The other is that England has also been very 
backward in respect to the organization of such education 
as she has had. To an extent these are but different as- 
pects of one grand fact. Had the efficiency of public 
education at any time equaled that of Scotland, Germany, 
the United States, or France, it would have compelled 
more order and system; while, on the other hand, a 
properly organized and administered system would have 
carried instruction to a far greater height. It is not easy 
to say in which particular the inferiority of England is 
the more marked. Whatever the truth may be, it will 
conduce to a good understanding of the state of things 
that long existed, and that has not yet been wholly 
changed, to state some of the more important causes that 
produced it. 

The first thing to be considered is the English Church. 
The Protestant Reformation gave education and schools 
an enormous impulse. ' ' The Reformed religion rests on 
a book, the Bible, ' ' De L,aveleye has said. ' ' The Pro- 
testant therefore must know how to read. . . . Cath- 



l Iyondon, May, 1892. 



376 



THE BACKWARDNESS OF EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 377 

olic worship, on the contrary, rests upon sacraments and 
certain practices, such as confession, masses, sermons, 
which do not necessarily involve reading. ' ' In England 
alone, of all the countries where it prevailed, the Reforma- 
tion marks no real educational era. Much of the explanation 
of this anomaly is found in the character of the Anglican 
Church and in the manner of its establishment. The 
Church of England was a compromise. Anglicanism lays 
less emphasis than other Protestant bodies upon preaching 
and teaching, and more upon- rites, ceremonies, and tradi- 
tion. Its appeal to the aesthetic nature is more direct and 
powerful, but its appeal to the intellect is less so. Ac- 
cordingly, high popular intelligence is less important. 
Parliament is supreme alike over creed and canons. 
Church government is from above, not from below; the 
laity have nothing whatever to do with the appointment 
and the installation of their ministers. Furthermore, the 
English Church originated largely in State questions and 
policies, and its form was shaped far more by the Crown 
and Parliament than by the people themselves. Angli- 
canism did not touch the springs of the national life in 
England as Calvinism and IyUtheranism did in Scotland 
or in Northern Germany. 

Dissent, however, prevailed from the very beginning, 
and tended to increase as time went on. As a rule, Dis- 
senters have taken far more interest than Churchmen in 
the education of the masses, but the constantly multiply- 
ing ecclesiastical and theological divisions, begetting 
different educational ideas, as well as great sectarian 
strife and bitterness, have tended powerfully to retard the 
erection of a State system of schools. 

The second fact to be considered, and one closely con- 
nected with the one just dismissed, is the original genius 
of English society and the English government. This is 



378 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

aristocracy. Until recent years the freedom of which 
England so well boasted rested on an aristocratic rather 
than a democratic basis. It was the great barons and the 
Church dignitaries who resisted John and wrung from 
him the charter of 1215. Afterwards the middle classes 
were slowly admitted to a participation in political 
affairs; but it was not until the Reform Bill of 1832 that 
the center of gravity in the English system began to 
shift, and even then it shifted so slowly that the nation 
was not democratized until the great Enfranchisement Act 
of 1867. And still there is no other country in Europe 
where education is so distinctly organized on class lines. 
The third fact, which lies behind and conditions both 
the others, is the character of the English mind. It is 
common for Continental writers to berate Englishmen for 
their practical mental habit and their lack of ideas. M. 
Guizot, for example, said whoever observed with some 
degree of attention the genius of the English nation, 
would be struck, on the one hand, by its steady good 
sense and practical ability and, on the other, by its want 
of general ideas and of elevation of thought on theoretical 
questions. M. Taine depicts this aspect of the English 
mind at much greater length and in much stronger lan- 
guage. ' ' The interior of an English head, ' ' he says, 
" may not unaptly be likened to one of Murray's Hand- 
books, which contains many facts and few ideas; a 
quantity of useful and precise information, short statisti- 
cal abridgments, numerous figures, correct and detailed 
maps, brief and dry historical notices, moral and profitable 
counsels in the guise of a preface, no view of the subject as 
a whole, none of the literary graces, a simple collection of 
well-authenticated documents, a convenient memorandum 
for personal guidance during a journey." And again: 
"The word ' to organize,' which dates from the Revolu- 



THE BACKWARDNESS OF EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 379 

tion and the First Empire, exactly summarizes the facul- 
ties of the French mind, the success of well ordered and 
distributive reason; the vast and happy effects of the art 
which consists in simplifying, classifying, subtracting. 1 

The Germans are even less appreciative of the English 
mind, or at least of English philosophy, than the French. 
The pragmatical mental habit of the English, they make 
a constant gibe. "Bacon's name," says Max Miiller, 
' ' is never mentioned by German writers without one 
provision, that it is only by a great stretch of the meaning 
of the word, or by courtesy, that he can be called a philos- 
opher. ' ' The Englishman retorts that the Germans are 
dreamy and mystical. Matthew Arnold was always lament- 
ing the small interest that his countrymen took in ideas. 

Perhaps the Continental writers, as M. Taine, indulge 
in some exaggeration; but there can be no doubt that 
they lay their fingers on characteristic features of the 
English mind. The typical Englishman delights in facts 
and precedents; he is strongly attached to things accom- 
plished, but extremely shy of things unaccomplished; he 
has no love of comprehensive theories, general views, and 
abstract principles; he dreads innovation; he has great 
talent in patching up old systems, but no talent or liking 
for setting up brand new ones. Lord Melbourne was a 
typical Englishman; he belonged to the Whig, or so- 
called Liberal, party; and one of the characteristic anec- 
dotes of him is that, when Prime Minister, he invariably 
met the innovators who came to him with novel ideas and 
schemes of reform with the question, " Can't you let it 
alone?" 

The national genius is seen in all the characteristic 
features of England. It is the country of incongruities, 

1 Notes on England^ XXIX. Characteristics of the English 
Mind. 



380 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

contradictions, solecisms, and legal fictions. No country 
better illustrates, in the social and political sphere, the 
continuity of evolution, the persistence of growth; in 
no country are there fewer traces of the theorist, the 
doctrinaire, the codifier, or the system-maker; in no 
country is a knowledge of history more necessary to 
enable one to understand the existing order of things. In 
fact, it is almost impossible to understand what is with- 
out understanding how it came to be. Mr. Fyffe, speaking 
of the Universities, remarks: 

Observers accustomed to the system and regularity of cen- 
tralized states on the Continent have often noticed with some sur- 
prise how in England institutions of an old, and even an obselete, 
type are allowed to continue in existence after others more in 
accordance with the needs of the time have sprung up by their 
side. Revolution has never cleared the ground; corporations are 
powerful; the public indulgent or illogical. And so it happens 
that while the creating or reforming work of an epoch of change 
abroad may be expressed almost by figures and dimensions, in 
England we have to tell how one feature or another of some 
venerable but narrow edifice is made tolerable for modern use; 
how the designs of a middle time are developed or enlarged; and 
in what form the workmen of our day have in their turn added to 
the inheritance of the past. True for English institutions gener- 
ally, this is peculiarly true of our Universities. 1 

" Revolution," used by Mr. Fyffe, is a peculiarly sug- 
gestive word in this place. At present the tendency of 
historians and social philosophers is to belittle revolutions 
and almost to abolish them; ''evolution" and not "revo- 
lution" is now the vogue; "institutions are not made," 
we are told, "they grow." Such is the tendency of 
thought, and it is partly the effect and partly the cause of 
the wide use of the historical method. It may be ques- 
tioned whether this tendency is not over- strong; whether 

1 The Universities. In T. H. Ward's The Reign of Queen 
Victoria, Vol. II., p. 288. 



THE BACKWARDNESS OF EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 381 

the new school is not too much rounding off the corners 
of the old ' ( epochs, " ' ' periods ' ' and ' ' ages;" whether 
there are not facts that are not held by the flowing 
curves of the popular writers on ' ' the unity ' ' and ' ' the 
continuity of history. ' ' However this may be, English- 
men have more reason, at least historically, for adopting 
the new view than men of the Continent. It is a long 
time now since the foot of a hostile soldier has touched 
English soil; a long time since a battle has been fought 
within her borders; a long time since the State has been 
torn by such feud or faction as required force for its sup- 
pression. Society has not been disturbed by violent con- 
vulsions since the Civil War; the course of history has 
been one of orderly development; which, again, is partly 
the result and partly the cause of the prevailing mental 
habit. The Restoration was peacefully effected ; the 
Revolution was accomplished on the legal theory that 
nothing had been done but to elect a new king in the room 
of the old one who had abdicated the throne; Reform has 
made its way from one victory to another, not indeed 
without strong opposition, but without armed resistance. 
Still the Revolution of 1789 stands for more than words 
can tell in Europe, and most of all in France. It is not 
an accident that M. Taine is able to connect "to or- 
ganize ' ' with the Revolution and the First Empire. At 
least, who can tell how different social, political, and edu- 
cational history might have been in England, had the coun- 
try been exposed to the storms of war that have swept 
the countries across the Channel and the German Ocean. 
Mr. Andrew Eang begins his delightful ' ' Historical 
and Descriptive Notes of Oxford" with a description 
that applies to the University almost as well as to the City. 

Most old towns are like palimpsests, parchments which have 
been scrawled over again and again by their successive owners. 



382 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

Oxford, though not one of the most ancient of English cities, 
shows more legibly than the rest the hand-writing, as it were, of 
many generations. The convenient site among the interlacing 
waters of the Isis and the Cherwell has commended itself to men 
in one age after another. Each generation has used it for its own 
purpose; for war, for trade, for learning, for religion; and war, 
trade, religion, and learning have left on Oxford their peculiar 
marks. No set of its occupants, before the last two centuries 
began, was very eager to deface and destroy the buildings of its 
predecessors. Old things were turned to new uses, or altered to 
suit new tastes; they were not overthrown and carted away. Thus, 
in walking through Oxford, you see everywhere, in colleges, 
chapels, and churches, doors and windows which have been 
builded up; or again, openings which have been cut where none 
originally existed. The upper part of the round Norman arches 
in the Cathedral has been preserved, and converted into the 
circular bull's-eye lights which the last century liked. It is the 
same everywhere, except where modern restorers have had their 
way. Thus the life of England, for some eight centuries, may be 
traced in the buildings of Oxford. 

The English Secondary Schools exhibit the same incon- 
gruities and inconsistencies, the same blending of the 
antique and the modern, that are found in the Univer- 
sities, though perhaps not to the same degree. And 
much the same is true of the Elementary Schools also, at 
least as regards their organization and machinery. 

Still another fact to be considered is that elementary 
education was long the exclusive work of individuals and 
of voluntary associations. It was not until 1870 that the 
Government took it vigorously in hand, and by that time 
an organization had been developed too powerful for Gov- 
ernment, so at least it thought, to disturb. Even then 
the State did not dispense with the institutions which 
individuals and private bodies had created, but rather sup- 
plemented, extended, and nationalized them. Professor 
Bryce thus illustrates the relation of the State and 
National Governments in the American system: 



THE BACKWARDNESS OF EDUCATION IN ENGLAND. 383 

The central or National government and the State govern- 
ments may be compared to a large building and a set of smaller 
buildings standing on the same ground, yet distinct from each 
other. It is a combination sometimes seen where a great church 
has been erected over more ancient homes of worship. First the 
soil is covered by a number of small shrines and chapels, built at 
different times and in different styles of architecture, each com- 
plete in itself. Then over them and including them all in its 
spacious fabric there is reared a new pile with its own loftier roof, 
its own walls, which may perhaps rest on and incorporate the 
walls of the other shrines, its own internal plan. 1 

This happy simile is no bad description of the system 
created by the Elementary Education Acts. Consider- 
able parts of the ground previous to 1870 were covered by 
small and independent systems; these have been connected, 
the remaining parts of the ground covered, and the whole 
incorporated into the system that now exists. A full 
description of this system would be a somewhat trying 
task. It is hard for a foreigner, studying at a distance, 
to understand it. This is owing partly to the fact that it 
is a growth, and not a structure reared according to any 
general plan; partly to the extraordinary variety and con- 
fusion of elements; and partly to the breadth of history 
one is compelled to traverse. 

The course of events in the Northern Kingdom was 
very different from that in England. Scotland early 
showed that tendency to abstract thought which is so 
strongly marked in the national character. The Protes- 
tant Reformation gave Scotland a great impulse. The 
type of theology that came into the ascendant greatly 
stimulated the popular intelligence. No appeal to the Di- 
vine Word could be more direct or powerful than the 
appeal made by Knox and his compeers. The Scotch 
Reformation began below and not above ; it originated and 

1 The American Commonwealth, Part I., Chap. 2. 



384 STUDIES IN EDUCATION. 

flourished among the body of the nation, and not among 
high civil and ecclesiastical dignitaries; in a word, it was 
democratic, taking firm hold of the very roots of the 
national life. So far from being propagated by or from the 
throne and the bishop's seat, it made its way against both 
and finally overthrew them. While in England the Papal 
supremacy was transferred to the Crown, in Scotland it was 
destroyed, and the government of the Church was lodged 
ultimately in the people themselves. While he was still 
preaching in England, before he entered upon his great 
work in his own country, Knox contended that schools for 
the education of youth should be erected throughout the 
nation. It was natural that, as soon as the Reformers began 
to act for themselves, they took care to provide for learning 
as well as piety. The ' ' First Book of Discipline, ' ' com- 
piled by a committee of which Knox was one, laid out a 
far-reaching plan quite in advance of the times. It re- 
quired that a school should be erected in every parish for 
the instruction of youth in the principles of religion, gram- 
mar, and the L,atin tongue. It proposed that a college 
should be established in every ' l notable town, ' ' in which 
logic and rhetoric should be taught along with the learned 
languages. The regulations of the framers for the three 
National Universities discover an enlightened regard to 
the interests of literature. These plans were not fully 
carried out; but even as matters stood, and notwith- 
standing the confusion in which the country was involved, 
learning made great progress. The famous Burgh schools, 
which have done so much for the country, date from this 
period, and the University of Edinburgh was the child 
of the Reformation. 1 

^ee McCrie: Life of Knox, Period VII. 







Wti 



BUI 







■ 

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